Marketization of Planning : The Cases of Quayside-Toronto and Fikirtepe-Istanbul

Neoliberalism is undoubtedly one of the most fundamental concepts when explaining urban development and spatial processes. Urban politics is one of the most fundamental fields in which neoliberal restructuring is effective. Neoliberal urbanization aims to make urban areas attractive for capital and increase the role of market forces in urban development. One of the most practical ways to achieve this is to integrate neoliberal market-oriented approaches into urban planning and transform existing planning systems into marketized planning systems. To realize this integration, formulating large-scale urban development projects with market logic in partnerships between the public and private sectors is beneficial. This research paper examines two cases from Toronto and Istanbul to see how neoliberal market-oriented approaches are adapted into urban planning and what are the implications of this adaptation. In doing so, this paper investigates how actors, especially from the private sector, contributed to the marketization process of planning. Furthermore, this paper looks into how market-thinking and market-oriented methods were blended with regulatory planning frameworks.