Prof. Dr. Nilgül Karadeniz

Programme Director

The relationship between human and nature has entered a different evolutionary process since humanity began to transform natural resources into surplus products. In the process that started with the discovery of urban life and continues with the planetary urbanization, we experience today that nature has faced “creative destruction”. The excessive consumption of resources and the domination of humans over nature have prepared the infrastructure for a great ecological crisis.

An anthropocentric environmental understanding that separates humans from nature has brought many ecological crises such as food, water, climate, global epidemics. Despite the negative effects of this crisis, which we now directly experience in every aspect of life, excessive urbanization, uncontrolled use of natural resources and ecological destruction continue unabated. Being aware of the need for nature to sustain life, has become one of the most vital issues of our time to discuss how to radically transform from a human-centered approach to a nature-centered approach.

Urban and Ecology Working Group aims to identify current problems, explore current perspectives for their solutions, and present applicable models for the construction of a sustainable relationship between human nature and city-rural. In this context, mitigation and adaptation processes of the climate crisis and the natural disasters it brings, planning of gray/blue/green infrastructures and discussion of application models, development of site-specific nature-based solutions, consideration of ecosystem services with their economic, ecological and social dimensions will be included in the programme.

Urban and Ecology Working Group intends to offer the solution of ecological problems that are local in their origins but global in their effects, through scientific research, publications, reports, and analyses. Similarly, interviews, symposia, etc. aims to carry out activities that center nature by creating information-sharing platforms.

Prof. Dr. Nilgül Karadeniz

She has graduated from Ankara University, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Landscape Architecture in 1986. Her postgraduate studies are focused on planning of protected area and management of sensitive ecosystems. Recently, she has been working on landscape biography, ecosystem services, and green infrastructure. Between 2006 and 2012, she served as ECLAS (European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools) Secretary-General and ECLAS Vice President, respectively. She was a member of the Steering Committee between 2002 and 2013 in the LE: NOTRE Project, which was initiated to develop cooperation on a global scale in education, research, and professional practice. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute, of which she was the chairman for one term.