A COMPARISON FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCES OF THE TURKISH METROPOLITANS’

Authors : Yağmur KARA

Pages : 313-321

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Publication Date : 2019-02-28

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Since 1950’s Turkey had to face with rapid urbanization caused by population growth and migration. Therefore, like many other developing countries, country has been experiencing environmental problems. The spread of residential areas transformed forests and agricultural lands into urban, increased water consumption and air pollution enhanced the stress on ecosystem. The objective of this study is to measure urban environmental sustainability of densely populated cities in Turkey and rank their environmental performances. With this aim an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model is proposed since AHP is an efficient method in complex decision making processes. Five indicators such as; particulate equivalent, forest area, drawn water, wastewater discharged and, wastes are employed in the model. The results indicate that Bursa has the highest environmental sustainability score. It is followed by İzmir, Adana, Kocaeli, Mersin, İstanbul and Antalya. The lowest rated cities are Konya, Ankara and Gaziantep. Besides, there exist a positive relationship between environmental performances of the metropolitans and income.
Keywords : Environmental Sustainability, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Sustainability, Sustainable Cities, Multi Criteria Decision Making, Urban Sustainability