METROPOLITAN PLANNING Ab Urbe Condita in Situ: Large Urban Systems and Metropolitan Planning in Istanbul

Istanbul has been planned—and replanned—for more than two millennia. Yet no single work has placed its metropolitan evolution in rigorous conversation with the world's greatest urban laboratories: New York, Paris, Tokyo, Mumbai, Lagos, São Paulo. Until now.Metropolitan Planning: Ab Urbe Condita in Situ is a comprehensive, practitioner-scholar analysis of how large urban systems are governed, broken, reformed, and reimagined. Beginning with a provocative truth—that a map is not a territory but a representation—Dr. Ulaş Akın leads the reader from the Neolithic layers of Yenikapı through the institutional battles of the 21st century to the emerging paradigm of regenerative urbanism.What this book covers:Spanning five parts and fourteen chapters, the book moves systematically from global to local:Global North Metropolitan Laboratories — the U.S. MSA system and mega-regions, Grand Paris, Greater London Authority, the Dutch Randstad polycentric modelEurasian Metropolitan Giants — China's Jing-Jin-Ji strategy, India's seven megacities, Moscow's 2012 expansion, Tokyo's railway-led polycentricityGlobal South Metropolitan Frontiers — Mexico City's sinking crisis, São Paulo's fragmented governance, Cairo's informality, Lagos's unplanned growthIstanbul Laboratory — three decades of metropolitan reform in Türkiye, the transformation from fragmented city to whole-city model (2004–2020), the IMP experience, mega-projects, and the birth of IPANew Generation Planning — SUMP, ICCAP, SECAP, GCAP, and the concept of Masterplanification: what happens when a city drowns in its own plansA concept you won't find elsewhere:The book introduces Masterplanification—the paradox of plan overload—and develops a Fine-Tuning Framework for synchronizing multi-level metropolitan governance. It also confronts the TMP-SUMP dichotomy: two fundamentally different theories of what planning is actually for.Why it matters now:As AI, LiDAR, open data, and climate adaptation reshape what cities can know about themselves, the book asks a harder question: do institutions have the capacity to act on what they know? Drawing on Cahit Arf's 1958 lecture "Can Machines Learn and How?" and the concept of akl-ı selim (sound judgment), it argues that technological arsenals without institutional wisdom are merely expensive measurements.The conclusion points toward regenerative cultures—not just sustainable cities, but cities that restore ecological and social capital over time.For whom:Urban planners, architects, developers, policy analysts, and graduate students in urban studies, regional planning, and public administration. Also essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Istanbul—not as a tourist destination, but as one of the world's most complex, resilient, and instructive metropolitan systems.About the author:Dr. Ulaş Akın is an urban and regional planner with over twenty years of experience at the intersection of metropolitan governance and strategic innovation. He holds M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Istanbul Technical University and a postgraduate degree from IHS/Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has contributed to Istanbul's landmark planning documents—including the Environmental Order Plan, the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, and the Green City Action Plan—and currently leads εκοSystems Lab, an impact practice focused on regenerative urbanism. Read more