Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) Annual Congress, Venice, İtalya, 9 - 13 Temmuz 2019, ss.739-761
This study
conveys the two-semester studio experience of the Urban Planning Master’s
Program at Istanbul Technical University in the 2018-19 academic year. The aim
is to build on the conducting of this studio considering its teaching
strategies, methods, and curriculum, which were designed for an experiential
learning and collaboration experience in line with its topic of collaborative
planning and governance. Planning studios in Turkey are largely characterized
by an ends-driven comprehensive planning paradigm. However, this study argues
that in order to address contemporary planning practices and increasingly
complex planning problems such as those in Istanbul, today’s planning studios
must explicitly focus on the means of the planning issue at hand and invite
students to take on the role of the actual practitioners and empathize with
local stakeholders.
Based on
these premises, the first-semester studio allowed the students to choose a case
neighborhood in Istanbul in line with their academic interests. Supported with
relevant theoretical readings and case-driven literature research, they were
involved in a field trip, a formal briefing at the local municipality, thematic
data gathering and analysis (including an advanced stakeholder analysis), assessments,
and collaborative planning proposals with spatial, financial and participatory
aspects. In the following semester, they are expected to fit their
refined plans into a collaborative governance model. They will discuss various approaches
in both a structured studio debate and an on-site focus group study with local
actors to test and revise their models.
Through
instructor observations, jury assessments, and informal student feedback, the
preliminary findings have revealed that an interactive and inclusive studio
design which actively involves both students and local actors has greater
benefits for graduate students’ motivation, comprehension, and solution
generation to real-life planning issues. These findings will be further tested
towards a refined studio framework by the end of the academic year.