Kent Akademisi

Abstract

Stream corridors, which have been used as waste discharge areas since the Industrial Revolution, have become invisible in uncontrolled developing cities due to rapid population growth. Most of the urban stream corridors have been enclosed in concrete canals, covered and their beds have been changed. Streams, which lost most of their natural functions as a result of pollution and the aforementioned processes, became a source of problems as a result of the pressures they were subjected to. However, flood control, recreational potential, being a biodiversity reserve area, etc. Due to the benefits they provide to the ecosystem with these services, urban river corridors are areas that need to be improved and brought back to the city and the ecosystem. With this approach, awareness of urban river corridors has increased for nearly 30 years and improvement efforts have started to gain momentum by reintegrating the corridors into ecosystems. The study area, Poligon Stream, is an urban river system that has been squeezed into a concrete canal under intense urbanization pressure and has been cut off from the ecosystem by being covered in some parts and causing floods that cause loss of life and property. This study presents restorative and rehabilitative design proposals for the reintegration of Poligon Creek with the green infrastructure approach into the ecosystem and the city. The study was carried out with two different approaches. In order to improve the destructive floods caused by the Polygon Stream in the short term, a rehabilitation project was prepared primarily to improve the current situation, and a second restoration project was proposed in order to set an example for the possibility of rehabilitating the area and reintroducing it to nature in the long term and to set an example for the correct use of the river corridors in new urban settlements. The restoration project also includes the case for the design of urban rivers in accordance with ecological principles before they are under pressure of construction. As a result of the study, rehabilitation and restoration projects were discussed and compared with the current situation, and various suggestions were made for improvement. As a result, in order to create a healthy urban ecosystem, it has been seen that ecological-based approaches will give much better results; as for large-scale planning decisions, the resilience of cities to disasters will increase with the support of green infrastructure systems, and existing natural resources can be used more sustainably and efficiently.