INTEGRATION OF STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT INTO URBAN DEVELOPMENT PLANS IN TURKEY: CASE STUDY OF ADANA CITY

摘要

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) has been an area of development and discussion for the last decade in Turkey. It is stated in the tenth article of the environment law (26th April 2006) that related subjects and details for integrating SEA will be reviewed in upcoming SEA regulation. A draft SEA regulation has been prepared by the Turkish Ministry of Environment and Urbanization. However, legal issues relating to the application process and methods used for SEA continue to be discussed. The fourth article of the draft regulation lists spatial plans covered by SEA. This article presents some of the results of a research project on the integration of SEA into urban development plans in Turkey. This project aims at analyzing the possible opportunities for SEA in Turkey, and the practicability of integrating SEA into urban development plans. The research is conducted in two parts. In the first part, procedural approaches to SEA in environmental plans are investigated, and a framework for these approaches is adapted at the institutional level. In the second part, various forms of SEA in practice are investigated for use in urban development plans in Adana city. This paper focuses on this part of the research and presents a spatial decision support approach using GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis integrated with ordered weighted averaging (OWA) and analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The results of the research indicate that local governments need a legal SEA framework for optimal spatial decision-making in Turkey.