ERKEN CUMHURİYET DÖNEMİNDE İZMİRDE ŞEHİRCİLİK: ÇAĞDAŞLAŞMA SENARYOLARI VE İKİ NAZIM PLAN

'Urbanism', 'that new science of town building', was fighting for its legitimization in Western countries at the beginning of the twentieth century; it would constitute an excellent tool for the young Republic of Turkey for the creation of a physical urban frame, the setting of a network, equipment and symbols, and an urban image that would support the modern society that the Republic aimed to achieve. Different planning models developed in the West would serve that purpose; particularly, the French and German models clashed with each other several times, as in the case of planning competitions for Ankara and Istanbul, in the search for a proper model for the modern Turkish city. While planning of the new capital, Ankara, was confided to a German planner, Hermann Jansen, the French urbanist Henri Prost was finally appointed for the planning of Istanbul. Ideological dimensions of urban planning practice in the Early Republican Period have already been studied by different authors who concede that the planning experience of Turkey began in 1927 with the international planning competition for the new capital, Ankara. However, a comprehensive urban plan was developed earlier for the City of İzmir in 1924, soon after the foundation of the Republic, though it could not be implemented before 1930's. Planning experience of the City of Izmir appears, in fact, as interesting as that of Ankara and it reveals the different attitudes adopted by the authorities of the Republic during thai period.The plan prepared for İzmir by Rene" and Raymond Danger, engineer-urbanists, with the collaboration of Henri Prost, architect-urbanist, was conceived as a holistic plan (plan d'ensemble) with the objective to define the future development of the City of İzmir and not as a partial reconstruction plan as it is generally known. This plan d'amenagement, which is a typical product of the Beaux-Arts School, remained in effect throughout 1930's, shaping the morphology of an important portion of the central districts of İzmir. In 1938, however, after the implementation of this classical Beaux-Arts plan, the Municipal authority took a completely different direction in the planning of the town by approaching Le Corbusier, a charismatic as well as much debated personality of CIAM, for the preparation of a new plan for İzmir. In spite of the interruption caused by the Second World War, ten years later Le Corbusier accomplished this task with a planning proposal. The master plan that he proposed is the expression of a radical attitude, if not a Utopian approach. Judged impracticable and put immediately aside, Le Corbusier's proposal represents, however, a turning point in the attitude vis-â-vis urban space. The change is certainly due to the planning approaches at international level: The functionalist ideology of CIAM began to be influential in town planning in this period. Yet, the question posed here concerns the sudden change in the attitude of the local authority which opted for a more radical model, and withdrew from the implementation of the existing plan. It can easily be supposed that both of the plans proposed by European urbanists were only importation of models and do not represent any conscious ideological orientation of the local authority, or that they were nothing more than a will of conformity with the 'spirit' of the time. At that point, however, the concept of modernity, the correspondence between different urban planning models in their understanding of this concept, and its significance(s) in the modernization ideology of the Turkish Republic appear as essential. The understanding of modernity is inevitably associated with a certain image of urban space. This image finds expression in the urban project aiming to modify or recreate the existing urban environment. There comes the problem of choice of model and its adaptation, which is a process of reception; a question peculiar to all domains of arts. This process, in which the images generated by the model play an important role, depends essentially on the correspondence between the doctrines on which the model is based and the ideology and expectations of the receptor (Jauss, 1978). In this article, the correspondence between the discourses supporting the models chosen for the planning of İzmir and different directions that the modernization ideology took in the Early Republican Period is questioned.