Urban population emerges as a driving force leading to pressure on environmental assets. While the rapid growth of the urban population correspondingly brings about an increase in urban expansion, infrastructure, transportation, housing, industrial area, and energy needs, it also brings environmental problems such as wastewater, noise, air pollution. Urbanization is one of the important processes experienced in parallel with industrialization and economic development.

According to the first census conducted in 1927, while 75.8% of the population lived in towns and villages, and 24.2% lived in provincial and district centers in Turkey, whose population was 13,648,270, however, the population started to accumulate in urban areas after 1950. According to World Bank data, the rate of population living in urban areas in Turkey was 76 % in 2020.

Today, about half ofthe world’s population lives in urban areas and this rate is predicted to rise to two-thirds by 2050. Approximately 75% of the population in Europe lives in cities^[3].

GRAPH 3- URBAN POPULATION RATIO IN TURKEY AND THE WORLD BY YEARS (%)

Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators), https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL. IN.ZS?- contextual=default.