A Quest for Sustainability of Cultural Heritage Sites: The Hanlar District of Bursa, Turkey

Abstract

Today, many studies have been carried out to support communityengagement in planning and urban design processes in Turkey.This study which tries to bring together community engagementand urban design within the framework of sustainability ofcultural heritage sites is a part of a scientific research projectwhich aims to create a participative model to develop an urbandesign guideline for the Hanlar District, a historical commercialdistrict including many inns in the city centre of Bursa, in Turkey.While a series of community engagement techniques wereexperimented during the project process, the aim of this article isto examine the potential benefits of using educational charrettesas a kind of design charrette to establish a participatory andcompetitive platform including public, private, voluntary actorsand local people in urban design process of heritage sites. Itoverviews the charrette use in developing adaptive re-use andurban design schemes for the inns and their surrounding publicspaces which are not actively used in the Hanlar District which has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 2014, and thenhighlights the proposals that were developed in terms of theobjectives of the Bursa and Cumalikizik Management Plan. Finally,this study presents the usability, suitability and practicability ofeducational charrettes as a community engagement way in theurban design process of the heritage sites while enabling differentactors to create new visions to sustain heritage sites. However, italso emphasizes the need for a participatory and holistic urbandesign process for the Hanlar District of Bursa including theadaptive re-use strategies for the inns to sustain the district.