Mitigation or adaptation, the determination of which strategy should be given priority for urban spatial development: the case study of central cities in Turkey.

Climate change is one of the greatest problems the Earth is currently facing, and efforts to alleviate its effects are most often carried out within the framework of two main strategies: mitigation and adaptation. Both of these strategies are necessary for today’s urban planning processes, and it is therefore important that they are considered together. However, there may be conflicts if urban spatial decisions support one strategy while having adverse effects on the other. This contradiction between mitigation and adaptation then raises the question of which one of two conflicting strategies is more important for the urban spatial development of a given city. This paper aims to determine whether a city should give priority to mitigation or adaptation by examining the spatial development dynamics. These strategies have prioritized for urban built-up areas in the case of Turkey’s central cities. According to the long-term results, 23 out of 81 Turkish central cities were identified as mitigation-priority, 43 as adaptation-priority, and 15 as equal-weighted. It is hoped that the method used in this paper will be useful for cities in developing countries which have not yet prepared a local climate policy or urban climate action plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]