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EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Keywords:Urban transformation; implementation decisions; project trajectories
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Introduction and research problem
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Urban transformation in Türkiye has been widely examined through changes in legal and institutional frameworks, shifts in authority between central and local governments, property-led development and social conflict. This literature shows that the form and governance of urban transformation have changed substantially since the 2000s (Kuyucu, 2018). Research at the municipal level further suggests that implementation depends not only on formal authority, technical expertise and financial resources, but also on capacities to coordinate actors, mobilise knowledge, learn and respond to changing circumstances (Tüfekçi & Alkay, 2019). More recent studies have adopted a process-oriented perspective, tracing institutional conflicts, critical junctures and changing governance arrangements through which regeneration trajectories evolve over time (Kurt Özman et al., 2023; Kuyucu, 2022).
These studies identify important conditions shaping urban transformation, but they leave a further implementation question. Institutional constraints become consequential through the decisions made as projects move from policy objectives to planning instruments and delivery. A conflict over authority, a legal requirement, a financing constraint or weak coordination may lead to a plan revision, a redistribution of responsibilities, a change in project sequencing or the reconsideration of an earlier objective. Implementation, therefore, cannot be understood only by asking whether an initially defined project is completed. It is also a process through which the project itself may be adapted, negotiated and redirected.
This study asks: Through what mechanisms do institutional frictions and implementation capacities shape the way urban transformation objectives are translated into planning instruments and project delivery over time? It also asks why these mechanisms produce different implementation trajectories across projects operating within the same broader planning and urban transformation regime.
The research compares two urban transformation processes in Mersin Province, Türkiye: the Bahçe–Barış Urban Transformation and Development Project in Akdeniz and the İsmetpaşa Urban Transformation Project in Tarsus. Both have involved prolonged and repeatedly negotiated implementation processes, changing planning decisions, institutional arrangements and interactions among multiple actors, yet their recent trajectories have diverged. Examining them within the same provincial and national institutional context makes it possible to compare project-level variation while keeping important elements of the broader policy environment relatively stable.
Rather than compiling another inventory of barriers or judging the cases through a binary distinction between success and failure, the study focuses on how constraints are translated into decisions and how those decisions reshape project pathways. By connecting research on institutional capacity with process-oriented accounts of institutional change, it seeks to develop a mechanism-based explanation of urban transformation implementation under uncertainty. Here, uncertainty is treated not simply as an external condition surrounding planning, but as something that is also produced, negotiated and managed through implementation decisions.
Conceptual framework
This study connects two dimensions that are often examined separately in research on urban transformation: the institutional conditions that complicate implementation and the capacities through which actors respond to them. Institutional arrangements shape urban regeneration by distributing authority, defining legal possibilities and structuring relations among public authorities, private actors and affected communities. In Türkiye, ambiguities in legal and institutional arrangements and conflicts among organisations have been associated with uncertainty, mistrust and implementation difficulties (Kuyucu, 2018, 2022). These conditions, however, do not determine project trajectories on their own; their consequences depend on how they are interpreted and addressed during implementation.
The study uses institutional frictions as an analytical term for misalignments that become consequential because they require an institutional or planning response. These may include contested responsibilities, tensions between legal requirements and planning instruments, conflicting actor expectations, resource constraints, or coordination difficulties across organisations and levels of government. The concept is therefore used not to produce another catalogue of barriers, but to identify moments at which a constraint enters the implementation process and requires a decision.
Implementation capacity refers to the ability of organisations and actor networks to formulate and carry out responses to such situations. Drawing on the broader literature on institutional capacity (Healey, 1998; Tüfekçi & Alkay, 2019), it is understood as more than the possession of formal authority, technical expertise or financial resources. It also includes the ability to mobilise knowledge, coordinate actors, sustain working relationships, learn from previous decisions and adapt to changing conditions. This distinction is important because capacity may exist formally without being effectively mobilised at a particular decision point.
Finally, implementation is conceptualised as a trajectory rather than the linear execution of an original plan. Planning involves decision-making under uncertainty, and divergence from an initial intention cannot automatically be treated as implementation failure (Alexander & Faludi, 1989). Urban regeneration processes may instead evolve through negotiation, adaptation and institutional responses to emerging problems (Kurt Özman et al., 2023; Taşan-Kok, 2010).
The framework therefore proposes that institutional frictions affect project trajectories through the implementation capacities mobilised and the responses adopted at particular decision points. Empirically, the analysis will trace a sequence from the friction encountered, to the capacity available or mobilised, to the resulting response, and finally to any observable change in planning instruments, actor responsibilities, project timing, scope or transformation objectives. This analytical logic is summarised in .
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Methods
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The study adopts a comparative longitudinal case-study design, combining process tracing with structured, focused comparison (Beach & Pedersen, 2019; George & Bennett, 2005). Process tracing will reconstruct temporally ordered decision episodes within each case and examine evidence linking institutional frictions, implementation capacities, responses and subsequent changes in project trajectories. Structured, focused comparison will apply the same analytical questions across both cases, allowing these sequences to be compared systematically.
The Bahçe–Barış and İsmetpaşa cases are selected purposively. Both are located in Mersin Province and operate within the same broader national planning and urban-transformation regime, while differing in local institutional arrangements and recent implementation paths. This provides comparative leverage by keeping important elements of the wider territorial and policy context relatively stable without assuming that the projects, legal instruments or institutional configurations are equivalent. Each case will be traced from its formal initiation or designation to September 2026, with earlier decisions incorporated where necessary to explain later developments.
The empirical analysis will begin with a chronological documentary record comprising relevant legislation, statutory planning documents and explanatory reports, municipal council decisions and commission records, municipal activity reports, project protocols, accessible tender-related material and other official documents relating to implementation. These sources will establish the formal sequence of each project and help identify critical decision points. Approximately 12–16 semi-structured interviews will be conducted with actors selected for their direct involvement in, or informed knowledge of, the projects, including municipal planning and urban-transformation staff at district and metropolitan levels, relevant technical or professional actors, and selected representatives of affected stakeholders. Interviews will examine how constraints were understood, which alternatives were considered and why particular responses were adopted. Documentary and interview evidence will be triangulated: documents will anchor the chronology, while interviews will help reconstruct the reasoning and interactions surrounding key decisions.
The principal unit of analysis is the decision episode: an identifiable, evidence-supported point at which an implementation problem prompts reconsideration of a planning instrument, institutional responsibility, project sequence, scope or objective. Each episode will be examined through four linked dimensions: the friction encountered; the implementation capacity available or mobilised; the response adopted; and its observable consequence for the project trajectory. Within-case analysis will first reconstruct these sequences separately. Cross-case comparison will then identify where similar frictions generate different responses and where different constraints lead to comparable adaptations. This design therefore explains variation through sequences of implementation decisions rather than reducing each project to a single end-state outcome.
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Expected results
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The analysis is expected to show that institutional frictions do not have fixed effects on project trajectories. Their consequences emerge through the decisions taken when a problem becomes consequential for implementation and through the capacities actors can mobilise at those moments. A similar constraint may be managed through coordination, accommodated through a change in a planning instrument, deferred, or intensified when an effective response cannot be assembled. Implementation capacity therefore matters not simply as an organisational resource, but insofar as it can be mobilised to shape a workable response. Responses to one friction may also alter the conditions confronting later decisions, making implementation a cumulative process rather than a series of isolated problems.
Preliminary documentary review suggests contrasting decision sequences in the two cases. In Bahçe–Barış, implementation has involved repeated adjustments to planning instruments. Plans approved in 2021 were subsequently revised when land-readjustment requirements created a need to reorganise parts of the implementation plan, while later revisions, objections and reconsiderations continued into 2026 (Akdeniz Belediyesi, 2026). Rather than indicating a single point of failure, this sequence suggests an iterative process in which attempts to make the project implementable generate further institutional and planning decisions. The analysis will examine how these successive responses affected the options available at later stages and whether they preserved, displaced or modified earlier objectives.
In İsmetpaşa, a different sequence appears to be emerging. In December 2025, the municipality decided to seek designation of the area as a reserve building area under Law No. 6306, explicitly linking this shift to accelerating implementation, accessing central-government support and enabling project phasing (Tarsus Belediyesi, 2025). The case will allow the study to examine whether changing a project’s legal and institutional configuration expands the range of responses available to local actors and redirects a prolonged implementation process. Further documentary analysis and interviews will examine how this decision was reached and what consequences followed, rather than treating the formal decision itself as evidence of successful implementation.
Across the two cases, divergent trajectories are expected to be explained more convincingly by sequences of decision-making than by the presence or absence of individual barriers, or by institutional capacity treated as a fixed stock. Some responses may preserve an initial objective through an alternative route; others may alter timing, scope, institutional responsibility or substantive content. The distinction between adaptation and failure may therefore become visible only by tracing what each decision changes and what possibilities it opens or closes for subsequent implementation. Taken together, the findings are expected to show how urban transformation projects are progressively remade through implementation decisions, and how uncertainty is both managed and produced within that process.
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Discussion and conclusion
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This study addresses a gap between research that identifies institutional constraints in urban transformation and work on institutional capacity by examining how the two meet in concrete implementation decisions. Its contribution lies in shifting attention from which barriers or capacities are present to how institutional frictions become consequential at particular decision points, how capacities are mobilised in response, and how those responses shape later implementation. This decision-centred perspective links institutional conditions to project trajectories without treating either constraints or capacities as fixed determinants.
The comparison of Bahçe–Barış and İsmetpaşa is expected to show that divergent trajectories emerge through sequences of decisions rather than from individual barriers alone. Implementation capacity matters as a situated and mobilised resource: it shapes which responses are feasible at critical moments, while each response may expand, narrow or redirect the options available later. Decisions taken to address an immediate problem can therefore become part of the conditions confronting subsequent stages.
This perspective also provides a more careful basis for distinguishing adaptation from failure. A departure from an initial plan is not, by itself, evidence of either. It may preserve an original transformation objective through different means, while successive adjustments may instead alter its timing, scope, institutional responsibility or substantive content (Alexander & Faludi, 1989). Evaluating implementation therefore requires tracing what changes through successive decisions rather than comparing a final outcome with an original plan in isolation.
For planning practice, the implication is not simply to remove barriers or strengthen capacity in general, but to recognise consequential decision points, mobilise the capacities needed to respond, and consider how short-term solutions may shape later choices. By showing how present responses become conditions for subsequent decisions, the study offers a process-based account of how urban transformation projects are progressively remade during implementation.
References
References
Akdeniz Belediyesi. (2025). 2024 yılı faaliyet raporu [2024 annual report].
Akdeniz Belediyesi. (2026, July 1). Akdeniz Belediye Meclisi Temmuz ayı meclis gündemi [Akdeniz Municipal Council July meeting agenda]. Official Akdeniz Belediyesi source
Alexander, E. R., & Faludi, A. (1989). Planning and plan implementation: Notes on evaluation criteria. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 16(2), 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1068/b160127
Beach, D., & Pedersen, R. B. (2019). Process-tracing methods: Foundations and guidelines (2nd ed.). University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10072208
George, A. L., & Bennett, A. (2005). Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. MIT Press.
Healey, P. (1998). Building institutional capacity through collaborative approaches to urban planning. Environment and Planning A, 30(9), 1531–1546. https://doi.org/10.1068/a301531
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Kuyucu, T. (2022). The great failure: The roles of institutional conflict and social movements in the failure of regeneration initiatives in Istanbul. Urban Affairs Review, 58(1), 129–163. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087420957736
Taşan-Kok, T. (2010). Entrepreneurial governance: Challenges of large-scale property-led urban regeneration projects. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 101(2), 126–149. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9663.2009.00521.x
Tarsus Belediyesi. (2025, December 2). İsmetpaşa Mahallesi rezerv yapı alanı [İsmetpaşa Neighborhood reserve building area] (Belediye Meclisi Kararı No. 156). Official Tarsus Belediyesi decision
Tüfekçi, Y., & Alkay, E. (2019). Kentsel dönüşüm uygulamalarında kurumsal kapasite yaratmanın önemi [The importance of institutional capacity creating in urban transformation processes]. Planlama, 29(1), 50–58. https://doi.org/10.14744/planlama.2019.39358