A Sustainable Approach to Urban Regeneration Process by SWOT Analysis

Abstract: Inner city deprived areas are valuable lands which have economical and social problems in addition to its physical conditions. Therefore, Turkey introduced interventions to these urban areas in order to improve the physical, social and economical conditions. However, interventions cause more problems rather than solving the existent ones such as; gentrifications, unemployment of inhabitant, loss of social and urban tissue. Problems consist of undetermined conditions of areas before or during implementation of the urban regeneration project. In this respect,, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of the projects have been limitedly analyzed in the urban projects. Therefore, this paper looks into an ongoing urban regeneration project in Izmir. A SWOT analysis is implemented on the urban project approach by using the case of Izmir-Ege Neighborhood. Observations, reviews, interviews are used to capture and analyze the data. Main findings show that there are deficiencies and weak points in regenerations but also opportunities for sustainable development.