The 24th seminar of the "Istanbul Urban Studies" seminar series organized by the Department of Urban and Regional Planning of Istanbul Medeniyet University moderated by Dr. Ayşegül CAN was held online on Friday, 12 November 2021. Nazlı VARLIER (Msc. Engineer) presented her study titled ‘Bütüncül Bir Yaklaşım Üzerinden Yaratıcı Kent Kavramının İncelenmesi: Tasarım Şehri İstanbul’ (A Comprehensive Approach to Examine Creative City Concept: Istanbul as Design City).
VARLIER starting her presentation with the definition and historical background of ‘creative city’ and then explained the other related concepts. The researcher evaluated the other studies on creative city from different researchers and she referred to three dimensions of creative city concept which are academical, practice and political. VARLIER mentioned the international organizations (such as UNESCO- Creative Cities Network), their strategies (such as 2030 agenda of creative cities for sustainable development) and globally accepted criteria used to classify creative cities and then evaluated Istanbul in terms of these criteria. The researcher said that Istanbul fell behind the other cities on satisfying creative city performance measurement. VARLIER said that studies on urban management should be intensified and new multi-levelled and multi-dimensional studies focusing on the link between creative city, sustainability and performance is needed.
In the discussion part, the reflections of creative city concept on Global South and Istanbul were compared.
