İzmir Became The World's First Cittaslow Metropolis

Mayor of Izmir Metropolitan Municipality Tunç Soyer's goal of bringing İzmir the title of “Cittaslow Metropol” has been successful. İzmir was declared the world's first Cittaslow Metropol pilot city at the Cittaslow 2021 General Assembly. Mayor Soyer said, "Cittaslow Metropol is a long journey that includes not only changing the physical structure of the city, but also touching the society."

Izmir won the title of the world's first Cittaslow Metropol pilot city. Izmir Metropolitan Municipality Mayor, who introduced the concept of Cittaslow Metropolis and carried out works to bring Izmir together with this title. Tunç Soyer Expressing his happiness, Cittaslow Metropol is a long journey that includes not only changing the physical structure of the city, but also touching the society.

The Cittaslow 2021 General Assembly was held online today with the participation of the mayors of 30 cities from 276 countries. Minister Tunç Soyer He attended the General Assembly from Ardahan, the sister city of Izmir, where he went to improve the cooperation between them. Saying that the Covid-19 epidemic has changed many things, President Soyer said:

“While we are sitting in our homes in quarantine during the curfew, many people started to ask more and more questions why we do not have more green spaces, when did we become so dependent on cars, why do we not have more walkable areas on our streets. The Covid-19 outbreak has caused us to attach more importance to the Cittaslow Metropol work that we started last year. We sought an answer to the question of how we can provide a better life in metropolitan areas with our 60 stakeholders from Izmir and our international working group. In this one-year period, we, as the Cittaslow Metropol pilot city, will implement our projects that we will develop with our stakeholders and community participation. We are very excited to see that this new sustainable city model, which started in Izmir, will be implemented in metropolitan cities in different parts of the world in the coming years. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown very clearly that our lifestyle and cities need to change. I believe that the Cittaslow philosophy, which is self-sufficient, productive and human relations are at the forefront, will be at the center of this change in cities.”

Common sense

İzmir has been working on the Cittaslow Metropol project for over a year with civil society representatives, academics, experts and opinion leaders to create a metropolitan management model that will start in İzmir and be applicable all over the world. Within the scope of the project, urban and good life perspectives in the world were analyzed and brought together with the philosophy of "slow life". The Cittaslow Metropol city model aims at people-oriented, sustainable, high quality of life that protects the values ​​of the city.

Six main themes

The Cittaslow Metropolis model has 6 main themes: “Society”, “Urban resilience”, “Food for All”, “Good Governance”, “Mobility” and “Cittaslow Neighborhoods”. Various criteria were determined under these themes. Within the scope of these criteria, projects will be developed and implemented for one year in İzmir.