Urban Policy Center
Urban Policy Center (UPC) serves as a hub for critical reflection and dialogue on the complex challenges facing cities, approached through a holistic perspective. By enabling urban and regional issues to be examined from multidimensional perspectives, it lays a foundation for sustainable and strategic policy solutions. It evaluates the multi-layered challenges encountered by local governments in strategic decision-making processes by considering scale, governance, actors, and temporal dimensions. Beyond solutions, it purposes to make visible the transition areas, critical thresholds, and dilemmas that shape urban policies.
UPC conducts research and policy-oriented work across a broad spectrum of fields related to cities and urbanization, including culture, society, economy, ecology, resilience, development, governance, climate change, planning and design, architecture, materials, infrastructure, and urban services. It provides a shared platform for thinking and debating on urban policy for those engaged with cities, particularly local governments, academia, and practitioners.
By building bridges between knowledge and experiences, Urban Policy Center facilitates an understanding of the political, economic, cultural, environmental, and social dimensions of urbanization., This offers a space for reflection and exchange on how urban policies are discussed, framed, and collectively shaped.
Within this framework, Urban Policy Center:
- Creates space for conceptual and critical debates on urban policy and contributes to their framing.
- Develops initiatives that bring together local government practice, academic knowledge, and field experience in a commonconceptual language.
- Analyzes how urban policies are interconnected across local, regional, and global scales, strengthening strategic perspectives by examining the relationship between short-term needs and long-term transformation goals through intellectual debate.
- Examines and discusses critical points where global frameworks require adaptation to local contexts and develops related policy recommendations.
- Monitors, analyzes, and opens to discussion emerging development areas and turning points in urban transformation processes.
- Conducts scientific research to develop policy-level frameworks on contemporary urban issues, organizes events that bring together diverse urban stakeholders, and produces publications.
- Designs and organizes workshops, talks, seminars, and discussions in various formats to deepen urban debates.
City & Society Journal
City & Society is a periodical publication prepared with an interdisciplinary approach to cities, urbanization, and social issues, featuring articles, interviews, and critical reflections by scholars and practitioners. Published since 2014, the journal focuses on contemporary urban issues by addressing the spatial, social, economic, cultural, environmental, and governance dimensions of cities.
Within the framework of its thematic dossiers, the journal brings together contributions from different disciplines on topics such as cultural heritage, migration, climate change, disaster management, participation, accessible cities, contemporary art, Marmara Sea, equality, food systems, and local diplomacy, building an intellectual bridge between knowledge production on cities and practical application.
Urban Talks
Urban Talks is a series of in-person and online talks and discussions where experts from different disciplines share their knowledge, experience, and perspectives on cities and urbanization. By bringing together diverse viewpoints around the current urban issues, the series aims to foster critical thinking, dialogue, and the development of conceptual frameworks for cities.
Through podcasts, webinars, and face-to-face gatherings that focus on the social, cultural, and spatial transformations of cities, Urban Talks brings together different disciplines and creates a space for public exchange and debate on urban issues.
