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FUTURE OF TURKISH CITIES: NEW URBAN PATTERNS IN EUROPEAN UNION? Contents: 1. Introduction 1.A . 1.B. 2. 2.A. 2.B. 2.C. 2.C.1 2.C.2. 2.C.3. 2.D. 3. 3.A. Basic Issues in Turkey’s Joining European Union Turkey Urbanization Transition In Turkey Urbanization Transition Urbanization in Turkey Factors Shaping Urbanization Pattern in Turkey Economic Structure of the Country Regional Disparities National Urbanization and Regional Development Strategies Future of Turkish Urban Pattern Urbanization Transition in European Union Urbanization Patterns Among Members with respect to Factors Shaping these Patterns. Comparison between Turkey and Other Members Conclusion Suggestions on the Implications on Urbanization if Turkey Joins the European Union and When It Should Join 3.B. 4. 4.A. Introduction Having land in Europe, the government of Turkey has been longing for joining the European Union since 1963 when it was accepted as an associate candidate. Now, in 1998 Turkey is still not a member, indeed it has been degraded to be considered in a special category, as the 12th applicant country. The intention of this paper is not to suggest why Turkey is not being considered for full membership or what it should do to be considered for full membership. It will examine the urbanization transition in Turkey and will suggest the future for Turkish cities and whether joining the European Union would make any changes in this transition. In order to be able to make such a suggestion on implications, examining the urbanization transitions not only in Turkey but among the member countries is necessary as well. I will also give a picture of the factors shaping such an urban pattern. Given the broadness and the intricacy of the topic, I suggest that it needs to be further investigated. Basic Issues in Turkey's Joining European Union As was mentioned earlier, Turkey is not a full member of the European Union. The main issues sited in this fact are the conflicts with another member state (Greece), not having a full-functioning democracy, and violation of human rights. These issues are basically political. However, there are other issues not as frequently sited or sited at all. These are mainly in the social and economic arenas. Turkey is a less developed country compared to the current members, displaying various characteristics of developing countries such as high population and urbanization rates, unstable economy with a low gross national product and gross domestic product per capita. Some member states do not want to disturb the balance of the Union by allowing in a less developed country which could cause high migration rates among the members and less stability among the current ones (Yalev 1998). The facts on the Turkish economy and demography will be presented in the following sections. A comparison between Turkey and European Community members will also be available. However, the political issues sited as primary cause for not being admitted to the European Union are not going to be discussed in this paper. Turkey Turkey is a very strategically located country with very apparent differences among the geographical regions. It is surrounded by the Black Sea on the north; Romania, Bulgaria, and the Aegean Sea on the west; the Mediterranean Sea, Syria, and Iraq on the south, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armania, and Georgia on the east. With such a location, it is a unique country. It is many things: European, Asian, Middle Eastern, Balkan East European, and Mediterranean. The country has 774,000 square kilometers of land and is divided into seven geographical regions. There are clear physical differences among these regions. The eastern and the northeastern parts of the country are very hilly, not providing a good basis for infrastructure and transportation network. This geographical disadvantage clearly shows itself in the development pattern in Turkey. In addition to the mentioned differences, there are disparities in the socio-economic aspects among the regions. The eastern and southeastern regions comprised 3 % of the national industry in 1975, whereas Istanbul, by itself accommodated 49%. There is also difference in the urbanization levels within the country which will be discussed later. Urbanization Transition in Turkey In order to be able to define the urbanization transition in Turkey, I would like to talk about urbanization transition in general, particularly in developing countries. Urbanization Transition As Drake suggests, urbanization transition is a visible and dramatic member of the family of transitions1. It is almost parallel with industrialization and exhibits itself clearly with the level of industrialization, which is seen as economic development in general. Most industrialized, in other words, developed countries, have reached high levels of urbanization and the developing or underdeveloped countries are experiencing urbanization. This does not necessarily mean that less developed countries have lower rates of urbanization than the developed countries because there are several countries that have as high rates, such as Brazil with an urbanization rate reaching 75% (Jones and Visaria, 1997). When examining the rates of urbanization, it is very important to look into the growth of the population in urban areas and more importantly to the rising share of the total population in urban areas. The latter signifies other factors than natural increase in urban population, namely rural-urban migration. There are various reasons for the rural-urban migration, in other words, rural push urban pull. The population in the rural areas does not have the same kind of opportunities as the population in urban areas. In rural areas, there are not many job opportunities (especially with decline in agricultural land and employment), good education and healthcare facilities, namely better quality of life and future for the households, as can be found in urban areas. On the other hand, whether the migrant population in the urban areas obtain the level of living they fantasize about is questionable. Another major factor in migration to the urban areas is the social connections that the migrants have in the cities. A significant ratio of the migrants usually have a family member or friend who have migrated to the city they leave their rural homes for. 1 Brechin, Drake, Ness, cd. (1992) p.325 Jones and Visaria argue that besides the growth of urban population; growth of large metropolises and urban primacy; problems of providing minimal urban infrastructure; issues in rural-urban labor transfer and employment; and the linkages between urbanization and regional development issues are among the general interest and concern with issues of urbanization in developing countries2 Drake suggests that urbanization transition is characterized by early stages in which there is rapid growth of urban population, and later stages, where decline in this growth can be observed3. Although developing countries are expected to observe the earlier stages and likewise, the developed countries are expected to observe the later stages or urbanization transition, I would like to stress that the levels among different countries will vary significantly. In my opinion, there is a very important issue in this transition, mainly in the definition. What is urban? Is it an administrative term, or an area where the majority of the labor force is employed in formal urban sectors not in rural or agricultural sector, a population density of certain number of people, an area with various urban facilities, or is it simply a number of people? Assuming that it is a number, what is that number? I believe that the transitions observed in different countries are very dependent or rather biased on this number. For example, this number in Turkey (although the main criteria is based on administrative status as will be discussed in the following section) is 10,000 people. On the other hand, the urban definition requires a population of 20,000 people in Brazil and Indonesia, 5,000 people (besides other factors) in India and 2,000 people in China (Jones and Visaria, 1997). If some of these countries changed the size requirement to be classified as urban, we could observe much different levels of urbanization. In such a scenario, India would have been observing a much lower rate than 27% of 1991 and on the contrary, Brazil a higher rate than almost 75%. There is also the question of edge cities, existing particularly in developed countries. These can simply be defined as economically self-sufficient settlements distant from central cities. If we just take into account the number of persons living in the edge cities, it is likely that these settlements may not be able to step the treshold to be categorized as urban although there may be no rural character within these. However, there are examples for non-number related definitions. In Chinese case, the sudden jump of the level of urbanization from 23.5% in 1983 to 49.3% in 1988 is attributable to the change in the definition of "urban" in 1984 from an administrative perspective4. Another point that I would like to make is that while examining the urbanization transition in developing and developed countries, we should not see that as an 2 Jones and Visaria, ed. (1997) p. 23 3 Brechin, Drake, Ness, ed. (1992) p. 325 4 Jones and Visaria, ed. (1997) p.54 in chapter 3 "The Effects of National Urban Strategy and Regional Development Policy on Patterns of Urban Growth in China" by Aprodicio Laquian. independent transition. Rather, the roots of this transition can be traced in mainly the demographic, technological, and industrialization transitions. Moreover, the consequences of the urbanization transition can be observed in toxicity, epidemiological, and fossil fuel transitions. Therefore, it should be seen as a member of closely knit transitions. Urbanization in Turkey As is expected from a developing Country, there is a high rate of urbanization in Turkey. The transition can be traced down to the earlier years of the republic. Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 and Ankara was established as the capital city. Before the Republic, Istanbul served as the capital for the Ottoman Empire. With the establishment of the republic, Turkey started experiencing new stages of transitions in different members. The basic cause was the goal "modernization" which led to a major transformation in particularly agricultural, industrial, technological, and educational transitions as well as urbanization. Table ** displays the population of Turkey with a breakdown of urban and rural population since 1927. Urban definition comes from an administrative point, indicating the incorporated areas of a city or a town. It is interesting to see that in 70 years, the urbanization level has quadrupled throughout the country. The growth has been higher since 1950, particularly since 1960 which also corresponds to the beginning of the five-year development plans which will be discussed later. During the last almost four decades, the urban population growth rate has been higher than 1 % annually. Graph indicates that the urban population has been growing almost steadily. In order to be able to define the underlying causes of this pattern, we should examine other factors, such as the demography and the economic structure as well as the development plans. In graph **, we can see that the total population has been growing almost steadily as well and almost parallel to the urban population. Until 1980s, the rural population also grew but with a much less significant rate than the urban population. However, since 1980s, it has been declining. I believe this is mostly due to rural-urban migration, not due to natural decline of population growth. Although, there have been extensive efforts in family planning, especially in the eastern regions and rural areas, I presume that the 5 fertility rate is still higher in rural than in urban areas5. Turkey exhibits another characteristic of urban pattern in developing countries: the existence of a primate city. Istanbul is the largest city in terms of population as well as the most viable in terms of economics (table **). It has 8.3 million people as of 1997 and is still growing. Ankara, the second most populous city only has 35% of what Istanbul has. Istanbul, actually, is a mega-city covering the land between Tekirdag and Kocaeli. 5 The author does not have any data on Turkey to prove this point at this time. Another characteristic is seen in the distribution of the urban population by city size in Table **. The share of larger cities have inclined over the past decades and reached almost two-thirds of the entire urban population by 1980. Unfortunately, the data is not available for more recent years. However, currently, there are five cities, Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Adana, and Bursa that have over I million people living in their central cities. As expected from a developing country, urbanization has not declined or come to stability. In other words, Turkey has been observing the early stages of the urbanization transition, it has not reached the later stages yet. However, having a 65% urbanization level, Turkey promises to reach the later stages in the near future. One of the objectives of my paper is to create a model to estimate the future of the urbanization transition and suggest when it will reach the later stages. I will be using Stella for that and am planning to incorporate the demographic and economic structure as well. It still needs more data and more thinking. 2.C.1. Economic Structure of the Country The economy of Turkey has been changing basically since 1950s as was discussed under the “modernization” policy of Turkey. During the 1950s, the most important economic goal was to promote industrialization as well as modernization of agricultural techniques. Although there is no data on Gross Domestic Product by sectors as early as 1950 in Table **, Table ** demonstrates that indeed, before 1950, the labor force employed in the industry sector was only 7%. Since than, both industry and service sectors have been attracting labor force from agriculture which has last 33% labor force between 1950 and 1990. Gross Domestic Product exhibits similar results. The share of the agricultural sector has been decreasing since 1970s and has observed the most severe decrease between 1975 and 1985. After 1985, the rate of the decrease of the share has been at a slower rate. I am not sure if this could indicate a transition and that it is reaching stability. I will have to investigate. The service and the industry sectors are experiencing increasing share of the GDP. Service is the leading sector in the country and has experienced a higher rate of increase than industry. The changes starting 1980s are attributable to the “market economy” introduced during these years. The increasing share of industry in the national economy usually lead to increases in the gross national product as well as the gross domestic product. In the case of Turkey, although the GNP increased from 12 million US$ to 128 million US$, increasing more than ten times, and although GDP increased from 17 million US$ to 151 million US$, between 1970 and 1995, GDP per capita and GNP per capita increased much less (Tables ** and **). This is mainly an outcome of high rates of population growth. The tables also show that Turkey always had lower GDP per capita and GNP per capita than the world’s average. However, if the graphs are examined, we can easily see a pattern. Although these indicators in Turkey were not much lower than the world between 1970 and 1975 (in the case of GNP, until 1980), the difference gets wider afterwards. This I believe can be explained by increase of the population in Turkey as well. When we look back at the urbanization of the nation, we see a close link with the industrialization process as is expected. It is very difficult to establish a relationship between the distribution of the labor force or the gross domestic product and urbanization. Nevertheless, a numerical relation exists in this case, although it may not be significant. Between 1950 and 1990, the nation gained almost 34% labor force in industry and service, and the percentage of urban population increased by 37% (Table **). Regional Disparities There is an evident regional disparity in Turkey in geographic, demographic, and economic structure. This is also reflected in the urbanization level between the regions. The country is basically divided into seven regions (map **). The differences in the demographic and the urbanization areas can be observed in tables ** and **. The eastern regions including Black Sea, hold 30% of the population, where as Marmara region only houses 26% of the total population. However, there is a trend of decrease in population in Marmara region. There are several factors contributing to the decrease including the high cost of living, different economic incentives provided in other regions, and the over-crowdedness and all the ills associated with it. When the regions are compared over time, there is only one region that has been steadily gaining population, Southeastern Anatolia region. This captures attention because, there are two important issues about Southeastern region. One of them is the ongoing terrorism from the Kurds which I believe is a major cause for population loss, including deaths and migration to other regions. Another issue is the high fertility rates in the region. While the fertility rate is 3.4 throughout the nation, is 5.7 in the region (DSI, 1998). The other issue is the Guneydogu Anadolu Projesi (GAP standing for Southeastern Anatolia Project), a major development project covering 75,000square kilometers of Upper Mesopotamia covering Tigris and Euphrates river basins. It includes the cities of Adiyaman, Batman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Kilis, Mardin, Snrt, Sanliurfa, and Simak. The project aims to irrigate the and land which encompasses 20% of the fertile land in the country which would lead to a very significant level of economic and community development since most of the population resides in rural areas and could be employed in agriculture. In addition, the project aims to produce energy. It is very early to analyze the data about whether the development project has reached its goals. Examining the urban population ratios, the difference is clear again. Although urbanization in each region has been increasing, the western regions are much more urbanized than the eastern regions. Historically, the western regions have always had higher rates or urbanization than the national average (except in one case, in 1960 Central Anatolia had 0.4% lower rate than the nation) and the eastern regions have had lower rates than the nation. National Urbanization and Regional Development Strategies National urbanization policies are mainly found in the five-year development plans that are prepared by the State Planning Organization. The key elements will be discussed as follows based on Keles's book on Urbanization Policy, 1990. The first five-year plan corresponds to the 1963-67 period. Although the first five-year plan does not particularly address the issue of urbanization, this is a very important issue in the second five-year plan. According to that, large cities were seen essential for economic development, therefore, a lot of investments were made under the name of "growth poles" in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and Adana. In the third plan, it was apparent that the investments to the growth poles in the western region accelerated regional imbalance. For this reason, an organization was formed to help the distressed areas. The more recent five-year plans have realized that urbanization will still take place, eventually at a lower rate and have incorporated the importance of urban problems such as infrastructure, services, and housing. It is not until the sixth plan (1990-94) that urban environmental issues have taken place in the national urbanization and development strategies. 2.D. Future of Turkish Urban Pattern Here I am planning the construct a Stella model to show when Turkey could reach stability in terms of urbanization. Although I have not made any attempts yet, I have a big concern. This concern lies in the current rate of urbanization, in 1990-97, the annual rate of urbanization was 1.26% which is higher than the rate of 1.08% during 1980-90. Therefore, even though Turkey has reached almost a high level of urbanization, it is continuing with a rapid rate still. I know I have to look into crude birth and death rates, etc. but I would like to have an idea whether I could assume a ceiling level for urbanization for Turkey. I know it cannot be close to 100% or even 90% with the agricultural economy and the GAP project which will probably have an inverse effect on rural-urban migration and the decline of agriculture in the nation’s economy. I will need a lot of help with this section! 3. Urbanization Transition in European Union After the investigation of the Turkish case, I can conclude that examination of the urbanization transition in EU is not very easy to accomplish. In order to define urbanization transition, many factors need to be incorporated for each country. This is even more difficult when there is not a very dependable data source (world resource database had some discrepancies with the State Statistical Institute database in the Turkish case) and not much expertise on the countries. Despite all these disadvantages, I looked into the urbanization rates and some other indicators in the European Union. The analyses below are very general and are not very conclusive. 3.A. Urbanization Patterns in the European Union and the Factors Shaping these Patterns Before examining the pattern, I would like to caution the reader about a point I have made earlier; the definition of urban may change from one country to the other. For the purpose of simplicity, the definition is assumed to be unique throughout the Union. In this examination, 12 countries were taken. These were chosen according to the date of their acceptance as members: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, West Germany6 (1957), United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland (1973), Greece (1981), Portugal, and Spain (1986). As seen in the Graph **, almost all the European Union members are in the later stage of the urbanization transition. All of the members except for Portugal have exceeded 55% of urbanization levels, among which, some are very highly urbanized, such as Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Belgium (reaching (96%). One of the main questions of this paper was to answer whether joining the European Community had any impacts on the urbanization transition of the members. By looking at this graph, we can see no correlation. However, this issue needs to be examined in more detail for a better conclusion. The population graph (**) has a lot of similarities with the urbanization graph. Here, we can see that almost every country in the European Community has reached stability or will reach in the very near future. Graph ** shows the percentage of population living in cities of at least 750,000 population. The sudden jump in Ireland’s case can be explained by Graph ** which indicated the number of cities of the same size. This is valid for other cases like Greece as well. In the beginning of the paper, I had discussed that urbanization is seen parallel with industrialization. If industrialization and Gross National Product per Capita are take as indicators of economic development, then we should expect that in countries with high levels of industrialization and GNP per capita there will be high levels of urbanization. In order to illustrate this analysis, Tables ** and ** and Graph ** were created based on 1990 data. 6 The case for Germany is particularly difficult because some data is broken down into West and East Germany, whereas some data is for the entire country. In addition, some data is not available at all. Therefore, for most cases, Germany should not be a decisive factor. Although a clusteration can be traced in the relation between GNP per capita and urbanization, there are few exceptions and that suggests that the relationship is not a perfect linear regression. However, as was mentioned earlier, there is a real danger in comparisons among different countries on their urbanization levels. The data provided by the United Nations (1992) shows that the definition or urban changed among the countries. Although the most common definition for urban is “having at least 10,000 inhabitants”, this is not the case for some. For example, in Belgium, in Denmark, and in United Kingdom the definition of urban is not about the size of the population. On the other hand, “urban population” has to be greater than 2,000 in France, Germany, Luxembourg, and Netherlands and 1,500 people are enough to make an urban settlement in Ireland. With the light of these numbers the table ** needs to revised. Nevertheless, this is an infeasible task. Since it is impossible to know the number of people who could be living in urban areas with the same definition for urban without a real census, table ** attempts to show possible shifts of the urbanization levels that were shown in the previous table in the case the definition required at least 10,000 inhabitants7. In addition, when the primacy figures are examined, there is not a strong relation with the level of urbanization and primacy. It should be noted that these figures are based on the United Nations’ estimates and that data for some of the countries investigated in this paper are missing. These figures can be found in table **. When the distribution of GDP in different sectors, particularly in industry is examined, it is a different result. Although data for four countries is missing, the two (Spain and Greece) of the three countries with the highest share of industry in GDP are among the lower cluster of urbanization and GNP per capita graph. However, if the lowest shares of agriculture are taken instead of industry, we get a much different picture. Here the three countries with the lowest shares of agriculture (Luxembourg, Belgium, and United Kingdom), these are also the first, second, and fourth most urbanized countries in this selection. The notion that whether agricultural share of GPD can be an indicator of the level of urbanization and it could be used in forecasting the future of urbanization need to be examined in more detail. There is a predominant urban pattern among the members of the European Union. This pattern is a result of urbanization, suburbanization, deurbanization, and reurbanization (Commission of the European Communiites, Van den Berg et.al). Here, I will also discuss the issues like primacy, suburbanization, living conditions in the cities, and maybe others. 7 The cases for Belgium, Denmark, and United Kingdom are assumed to be stable since we do not have a number in their definition as a starting point. 3.B. Comparison of Turkey and the European Community Countries Although the previous section is not complete and that I cannot make a comparison in different areas, I would briefly like to mention that Turkey exhibits major differences between the members of the European Community. The differences are especially apparent in the rapid increase of the total and the urban population, increase of population in large cities, and the very low level of GNP per capita. In addition, the growth pattern of the cities is very different. Although there are some indications that suburbanization is the new trend in large cities in Turkey, the pattern of this process is different. In Turkey, the suburbs are basically high rise, high density areas, not showing a lot of similiarities with the other countries. We can suggest that because of this suburbanization, Turkey may experience the pattern of deurbanization and reurbanization like the other countries in the future. However, such a conclusion would not have a strong ground due to the high migration rate to the large cities in Turkey. Although, there might be a low rate of deurbanization (as seen in the case of Ankara), there will be a very high demand for housing, particularly in the city center to have easy transportation access. Another comparison can be made in the primacy issue. Although primacy is a characteristic of developing countries, this analysis showed that developed countries may experience primacy as well, just like the case of France, and Denmark ***. This section will be much more detailed. Reference: Brechin, Drake, Ness, ed., 1993. Population-Environment Dynamics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Commission of the European Comunities, 1992. Urbanization and the Functions of Cities in the European Community, Brussels. Danielson, Michael N. and Rusen Keles, 1985. The Politics of Rapid Urbanization – Government and Growth in Modern Turkey, Holmes and Meier Publishers, New York. DSI, 1998. GAP (Southeastern Anatolia Project – Brochures obtained from GAP Administration in Ankara, Turkey published by State Water Works). Jones Gavin W. and Pravin Visaria, 1997. Urbanization in Large Developing Countries: China, Indonesia, Brazil, and India, Claredon Press, Oxford. Keles, Rusen, 1990. Kentlesme Politikasi [Urbanization Policy], Ozkan Matbaacilik, Ankara. Symposium on Turkey in Europe due to the 75th Anniversary of the Turkish Republic, Ann Arbor, November 6, 1998, featuring Hayret Yalev (Consul General), Assoc. Prof. Muge Gocek, Asst. Prof. Paul Kubicek. United Nations, 1992. World Urbanization Prospects, United Nations, New York. Van den Berg Leo, Drewett Roy, Klaassen Leo H., Rossi, Angelo, and Cornelis H.T. Vijverberg, 1982. Urban Europe - A Study of Growth and Decline, Pergamon Press, Oxford. World Resource Institute: World Resource Database World wide web: www.die.gov.tr World wide web: www.infra.gov.tr