WICS – World Smart Cities Summit, held for the second time this year, was held with the participation of speakers from Turkey and abroad. On the first day of the summit, "Smart Cities" were discussed in every aspect. Chairman of the Turkish Grand National Assembly Environment Commission and Istanbul Deputy Erol Kaya, who was among the speakers at the summit, received his award from SAMPAŞ Chief Executive Officer Şekip Karakaya.
“X-rays of cities will be taken”
In his speech, SAMPAŞ Chief Executive Officer Şekip Karakaya, one of the platinum sponsors of the summit, stated that the "Smart Cities" issue is gaining more importance day by day and pointed out that the urban population is increasing rapidly all over the world, as in Turkey. Karakaya underlined that in this sense, it is necessary to "Get Smart" in order to keep the quality of life in cities at a certain level and even improve it. Şekip Karakaya; “Today, Turkey is ahead of European countries with the applications it has developed for smart city systems. However, what is important is the will to become wise. In order to manage a city, we first started by inventorying the cities in order to get to know that city and to create the will to become smarter. Thus, we will analyze the cities by taking x-rays. Because we must describe all the cities in which life passes from birth to death by dividing them into processes, define the economic and socio-cultural stimuli for each city on a geographical basis, and develop projects that can create business areas for each process,” he said.
We must create other Istanbuls
SAMPAŞ Chief Executive Officer Şekip Karakaya stated that the level of development in certain cities is higher than other cities due to the geographical development model adopted after the declaration of the Republic in Turkey; “This development brought about rapid urbanization and population growth in cities such as Istanbul, the Gulf Region and Adana, with the rapid increase in internal migration movement in Turkey. With the law no. 6306 on the transformation of areas under disaster risk, implemented by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, a rehabilitation process has begun in all our cities. This process showed us that we need to create other Istanbuls and make cities smarter. "A budget of 600 million dollars allocated to urban transformation is a figure that reveals the importance of the concept of smartening cities," he said.
Urban transformation is a total change
Sampaş Chief Executive Officer Şekip Karakaya stated that urban transformation does not mean demolishing a building with earthquake risk and building a new one; “Urban transformation is a total change. Urban transformation is Turkey's biggest option. "The concept of wisdom should be used as a very important tool for urban transformation for all layers of society to gain a new philosophy of life," he said.
