Evaluation Turkish Cities According to the Dimensions of Sustainability

Through this article, all the cities in Turkey have been examined within the framework of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability via TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution), one of the “Multi Criteria Decision Making” methods. It is foreseen that all the social stakeholders of the city may agree on new and different public policies with the governance mechanism by exposing the status of the cities according to various dimensions. All three of the environmental, social and economical dimensions were covered by considering their interaction in terms of urban transformation and development. The sustainability indicators for the implementation phase were developed by studying the indexes of the related literature. To assess the sustainability of all 81 cities, 52 sustainability indicators were used as the sub-dimensions of the social, economic and environmental dimensions.These findings will contribute to the efforts of municipalities and non-governmental organizations in activating the governance mechanism before finalizing public policy decisions. This will generate a balance between the benefits and the costs of all stakeholders and thus also to the applicability of these decisions for the sake of urban sustainable development.