Why am I passionate about this?

I am a researcher and professor of Planning and Urban Design at Middle East Technical University, Ankara (Turkiye). I am interested in how we can develop sustainable communities in urban and rural areas, modern and historical areas, and create a much more just world for all living beings. This question has become increasingly important for our life as uncertainties arise. New paradigms appear daily with climate change, wars, energy crises, pandemics, migrations, safety and security, growing diversity, and socio-spatial inequalities. I chose these books because they helped me think of new ways to achieve a sustainable and just world for all living beings. 


I wrote

Regeneration, Heritage and Sustainable Communities in Turkey: Challenges, Complexities and Potentials

By Müge Akkar Ercan,

Book cover of Regeneration, Heritage and Sustainable Communities in Turkey: Challenges, Complexities and Potentials

What is my book about?

A rapidly growing literature on sustainability has firmly recommended building sustainable cities and communities to cure multidimensional and complex urban…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies

Müge Akkar Ercan Why did I love this book?

In this book, Patsy Healey develops an approach to understanding and evaluating governance processes of urban space by investigating ‘actors’ who are involved in these processes and their power relations.

On the one hand, she emphasizes the importance of context, such as economic, social, and environmental contexts, which impact how the physicality of space and its governance process is shaped. Using a social constructivist and relational approach, she investigates urban space, its dynamics, and governance processes and shows the multiplicity of social worlds, rationalities, and practices that co-exist in the urban context.

Healey also explores and demonstrates the complexity of the power relations between actors of urban space governance. She finds out that particular forms of the collaborative process of spaces (especially socially inclusive and just collaborative ones) can be more effective in transforming practices, cultures, and outcomes.

By Patsy Healey,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Collaborative Planning as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Reviews of 1st edition:

...a major, carefully argued contribution, which should raise the discourse among planning theorists to a new level - a level reserved for a book that succeeds in the ambitious task of weaving together, into one fabric, theories of planning and theories in planning'. - Rachelle Alterman and Tamy Stav, Town Planning Review

'...[A] visionary and important work...' - A.McArthur, Planning and Design

'A brilliant exposition of the development of theoretical concepts of planning in the second half of the Twentieth century.' - A. Gilg, Perspectives in Rural Policy and Planning

Spatial and environmental planning is an…


Book cover of Urban Regeneration and Social Sustainability: Best Practice from European Cities

Müge Akkar Ercan Why did I love this book?

I think this book is very illuminating in learning the social aspect of sustainability.

She particularly focuses on urban regeneration projects in European cities. It shows how social sustainability can be assessed, measured, and monitored by using various regeneration projects in five European cities (Sant Adria de Besos in Spain, Turin in Italy, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Leipzig in Germany, and Cardiff in the UK).

I like this book because of its comprehensive assessment of the social sustainability of these projects by examining the institutional arrangements, financial products and tools, stakeholders’ involvement, and their contribution, monitoring, and measurement systems. In this way, it provides us with a new framework for assessing social sustainability. 

By Andrea Colantonio, Tim Dixon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Urban Regeneration and Social Sustainability as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Urban regeneration is a key focus for public policy throughout Europe. This book examines social sustainability and analyses its meaning and significance - an area of research which has, until now, been comparatively neglected. The authors offer a comprehensive European perspective to identify best practice in sustainable urban regeneration in five major cities in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, and the UK. Urban Regeneration & Social Sustainability: best practice from European cities examines the extent to which social sustainability is incorporated within urban regeneration projects in the EU, but also investigates how local authorities, developers, investors and other key stakeholders approach…


Book cover of Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition

Müge Akkar Ercan Why did I love this book?

This is a landmark book that provides an interdisciplinary and global analysis of the 20th-century cities. 

Graham and Marvin conceive the city as a flow process, and they examine the networked infrastructure of cities such as transport, communication, energy, water, and street networks.

What I like about this book is that it helps readers to understand the complexity and the sociotechnical processes of modern cities by using urban network infrastructure and providing examples across scales from local to global examples. This book also shows us how to approach modern cities with an interdisciplinary approach by using social theories such as actor-network theory, political economy, and relational theories. 

By Steve Graham, Simon Marvin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Splintering Urbanism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Splintering Urbanism makes an international and interdisciplinary analysis of the complex interactions between infrastructure networks and urban spaces. It delivers a new and powerful way of understanding contemporary urban change, bringing together discussions about:
*globalization and the city
*technology and society
*urban space and urban networks
*infrastructure and the built environment
*developed, developing and post-communist worlds.
With a range of case studies, illustrations and boxed examples, from New York to Jakarta, Johannesberg to Manila and Sao Paolo to Melbourne, Splintering Urbanism demonstrates the latest social, urban and technological theories, which give us an understanding of our contemporary metropolis.


Book cover of Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy

Müge Akkar Ercan Why did I love this book?

This is one of my favourite books, as it provides a rigorous analysis of the environmental policy in the US from the 1970s and 2010.

It pinpoints the successes and failures of these policies at the subnational, regional, and state levels by using several case studies such as air and water pollution control, state and local climate change policy, open space preservation, urban growth, and regional ecosystem management.

What I also really like about this book is that readers can see various meanings of sustainability and understand that the concept can serve as a roadmap, which helps settlement systems evolve in a sustainable way.

By Daniel A. Mazmanian (editor), Michael E. Kraft (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Toward Sustainable Communities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This analysis of U.S. environmental policy offers a conceptual framework that serves as a valuable roadmap to the array of laws, programs, and approaches developed over the last four decades. Combining case studies and theoretical discussion, the book views environmental policy in the context of three epochs: the rise of command-and-control federal regulation in the 1970s, the period of efficiency-based reform efforts that followed, and the more recent trend toward sustainable development and integrated approaches at local and regional levels. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the new approaches and places these experiments within the larger framework of an…


Book cover of Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice

Müge Akkar Ercan Why did I love this book?

This is another favourite book of mine because it rigorously shows communities' environmental inequalities. Agyeman identifies the critical problems of local communities regarding environmental inequalities by reviewing a series of small cases and one larger case in the US.

I like Agyeman’s reviews of these cases because they allow readers to draw valuable lessons and inspire ideas for re-interpreting environmental injustices in different localities. I also like the methodology of the book, which can be used in different localities as an approach to measuring environmental justice.

By defining performance, outcome, and accountability indicators, Agyeman helps us to measure progress toward sustainability.

By Julian Agyeman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Argues that environmental justice and the sustainable communities movement are compatible
Popularized in the movies Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action, "environmental justice" refers to any local response to a threat against community health. In this book, Julian Agyeman argues that environmental justice and the sustainable communities movement are compatible in practical ways. Yet sustainability, which focuses on meeting our needs today while not compromising the ability of our successors to meet their needs, has not always partnered with the challenges of environmental justice.
Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice explores the ideological differences between these two groups…


Explore my book 😀

Regeneration, Heritage and Sustainable Communities in Turkey: Challenges, Complexities and Potentials

By Müge Akkar Ercan,

Book cover of Regeneration, Heritage and Sustainable Communities in Turkey: Challenges, Complexities and Potentials

What is my book about?

A rapidly growing literature on sustainability has firmly recommended building sustainable cities and communities to cure multidimensional and complex urban problems. Creating sustainable communities in urban or rural areas, modern or historic sites is indispensable; however, it is extremely challenging.

This book aims to contribute to the debate on sustainable community development in historical spaces by providing a relational, multi-scalar, and contingency planning for sustainability, community needs, and governance. It examines the geometry of power, governmentality, and the politics of regeneration, mobility, and community needs in historic spaces in Istanbul.

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Book cover of The Bloomsbury Photographs

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author Woolfian Gym devotee World-traveller

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What is my book about?

An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group’s key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs. Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private insight into their lives.

Maggie Humm brings together a curated selection of these photographs to offer us a fresh portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, showing them in a new, domestic intimacy. She brings to life the texture of Bloomsbury: their pastimes, children, clothes, houses, servants, pets, and holidays.

The Bloomsbury…

The Bloomsbury Photographs

By Maggie Humm,

What is this book about?

An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group's key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs

Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private insight into their lives.

Maggie Humm brings together a curated selection of these photographs to offer us a fresh portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, showing them in a new, domestic intimacy. She brings to life the texture of Bloomsbury: their pastimes, children, clothes, houses, servants, pets, holidays. Several photographs are…


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