Urban Public Spaces, Public Health, and Heavy Metal Pollution Threatening in Ankara City Center: Strategies for Urban Planning

Year 2022, , 116 - 121, 26.12.2022

Öznur Işınkaralar , Emine Pirinç Bayraktar

https://doi.org/10.55385/kastamonujes.1177807

Abstract

In the last century, population growth and concentration in urban areas have caused many problems, especially in the central regions of metropolitan cities worldwide. One of these problems is air pollution. It reduces the quality of life of the citizens and threatens public health. Among the components of air pollution, heavy metals are the most dangerous because they accumulate in metabolism. Some are toxic and poisonous even at low concentrations and deadly for human health at high concentrations. Studies on the determination of air pollution are limited to revealing the current situation and do not offer solutions for urban planning. In this context, the accumulation of copper elements, which is extremely dangerous for public health, in the city center was investigated using landscape plants as a tool in the research. Within the scope of the study, the change of copper concentration in five plant species grown in areas with no vehicle density, less dense, and dense regions were investigated. As a result of the research, the increase in the concentration of copper in the air due to traffic has been revealed statistically. The study emphasizes the relationship between heavy metal pollution, which poses a severe threat to public health, and urban planning, and shows the basic strategies in terms of urban planning.

Keywords

City centers, Urban quality of life, Public health, Air pollution, Ankara

References

• Maione, M., Mocca, E., Eisfeld, K., Kazepov, Y. and Fuzzi, S. (2021). Public perception of air pollution sources across Europe. Ambio, 50(6), 1150-1158.
• Javed, A. R., Shahzad, F., ur Rehman, S., Zikria, Y. B., Razzak, I., Jalil, Z. and Xu, G. (2022). Future smart cities requirements, emerging technologies, applications, challenges, and future aspects. Cities, 129, 103794.
• Yigitcanlar, T., Degirmenci, K., Butler, L. and Desouza, K. C. (2022). What are the key factors affecting smart city transformation readiness? Evidence from Australian cities. Cities, 120, 103434.
• Wang, Q. and Li, L. (2021). The effects of population aging, life expectancy, unemployment rate, population density, per capita GDP, urbanization on per capita carbon emissions. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 28, 760-774.
• Oztas, Ç. Ç. (2021). How to Best Classify Rural in Metropolitan Areas? The Turkish Case. Planning Practice and Research, 36(4), 456-466.
• Rahman, M. M., Najaf, P., Fields, M. G. and Thill, J. C. (2022). Traffic congestion and its urban scale factors: Empirical evidence from American urban areas. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 16(5), 406-421.
• Haque, A. B., Bhushan, B. and Dhiman, G. (2022). Conceptualizing smart city applications: Requirements, architecture, security issues, and emerging trends. Expert Systems, 39(5), e12753.
• Isinkaralar, O., Varol, C. and Yilmaz, D. (2022). Digital mapping and predicting the urban growth: integrating scenarios into cellular automata—Markov chain modeling. Applied Geomatics, 1-11.
• Meydan, K., Vural, O., Oztürk, S. and Isinkaralar, O. Development of Ecotourism Resource Values Using Rapid Rural Assessment Method: The Case of Ilıca Village. Sciences, 10(1), 1-14.
• Cakir, C., Isinkaralar, Ö. and Oztürk, S. Geographical accessibility of health care network via GIS in Kastamonu. Kastamonu University Journal of Engineering and Sciences, 8(1), 60-68.
• Bayraktar, E. P., Isinkaralar, O. and Isinkaralar, K. (2022). Usability of several species for monitoring and reducing the heavy metal pollution threatening the public health in urban environment of Ankara. World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 14(3), 276-283.
• Sulhan, O. F., Sevik, H., and Isinkaralar, K. (2022). Assessment of Cr and Zn deposition on Picea pungens Engelm. in urban air of Ankara, Türkiye. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 1-20.
• Popov, O., Iatsyshyn, A., Kovach, V., Artemchuk, V., Kameneva, I., Taraduda, D. and Yatsyshyn, T. (2020). Risk assessment for the population of Kyiv, Ukraine as a result of atmospheric air pollution. Journal of Health and Pollution, 10(25).
• Clancy, L., Goodman, P., Sinclair, H., and Dockery, D. W. (2002). Effect of air-pollution control on death rates in Dublin, Ireland: an intervention study. The lancet, 360(9341), 1210-1214.
• Balakrishnan, K., Dey, S., Gupta, T., Dhaliwal, R. S., Brauer, M., Cohen, A. J. and Dandona, L. (2019). The impact of air pollution on deaths, disease burden, and life expectancy across the states of India: the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet Planetary Health, 3(1), e26-e39.
• Austin, K. F. and Mejia, M. T. (2017). Household air pollution as a silent killer: women’s status and solid fuel use in developing nations. Population and Environment, 39(1), 1-25.
• Skip, B. (2009). Water pollution impact on immune status of human organism and typical epidemic processes: mathematic model, obtaining results, their analysis and proposals to manage risk factors. In Risk Management of Water Supply and Sanitation Systems (pp. 199-204). Springer, Dordrecht.
• Golob, U. and Bartlett, J. L. (2007). Communicating about corporate social responsibility: A comparative study of CSR reporting in Australia and Slovenia. Public relations review, 33(1), 1-9.
• Woo, S., Yoon, S., Kim, J., Hwang, S. W. and Kweon, S. J. (2021). Optimal cooling shelter assignment during heat waves using real-time mobile-based floating population data. Urban Climate, 38, 100874.
• Moyer, J. D. and Hughes, B. B. (2012). ICTs: do they contribute to increased carbon emissions?. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 79(5), 919-931.
• Mohajerani, A., Bakaric, J. and Jeffrey-Bailey, T. (2017). The urban heat island effect, its causes, and mitigation, with reference to the thermal properties of asphalt concrete. Journal of environmental management, 197, 522-538.
• Curtis, L., Rea, W., Smith-Willis, P., Fenyves, E. and Pan, Y. (2006). Adverse health effects of outdoor air pollutants. Environment international, 32(6), 815-830.
• Chen, F., Kusaka, H., Bornstein, R., Ching, J., Grimmond, C. S. B., Grossman‐Clarke, S. and Zhang, C. (2011). The integrated WRF/urban modelling system: development, evaluation, and applications to urban environmental problems. International Journal of Climatology, 31(2), 273-288.
• Taylan, O. (2017). Modelling and analysis of ozone concentration by artificial intelligent techniques for estimating air quality. Atmospheric environment, 150, 356-365.
• Spengler, J. D. and Chen, Q. (2000). Indoor air quality factors in designing a healthy building. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 25(1), 567-600.
• Lu, W. Z., He, H. D. and Dong, L. Y. (2011). Performance assessment of air quality monitoring networks using principal component analysis and cluster analysis. Building and Environment, 46(3), 577-583.
• Harkat, M. F., Mourot, G. and Ragot, J. (2006). An improved PCA scheme for sensor FDI: Application to an air quality monitoring network. Journal of Process Control, 16(6), 625-634.
• Giordano, S., Spagnuolo, V. and Capozzi, F. (2021). Biomonitoring of Air Pollution. Atmosphere, 12(4), 433.
• Savas, D. S., Sevik, H., Isinkaralar, K., Turkyilmaz, A. and Cetin, M. (2021). The potential of using Cedrus atlantica as a biomonitor in the concentrations of Cr and Mn. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 28(39), 55446-55453.
• Tekeli, İ. (2008). Göç ve Ötesi. İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları.
• Saleh, E. A. A. and Işınkaralar, Ö. (2022). Analysis of trace elements accumulation in some landscape plants as an indicator of pollution in an urban environment: Case of Ankara. Kastamonu University Journal of Engineering and Sciences, 8(1), 1-5.
• Yayla, E. E., Sevik, H. and Isinkaralar, K. (2022). Detection of landscape species as a low-cost biomonitoring study: Cr, Mn, and Zn pollution in an urban air quality. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 194(10), 1-10.
• Isinkaralar, K. (2022). Atmospheric deposition of Pb and Cd in the Cedrus atlantica for environmental biomonitoring. Landscape and Ecological Engineering, 1-10.
• Turkyilmaz, A., Cetin, M., Sevik, H., Isinkaralar, K. and Saleh, E. A. A. (2020). Variation of heavy metal accumulation in certain landscaping plants due to traffic density. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 22(3), 2385-2398.
• Yilmaz, D., Öztürk, S., & Işinkaralar, Ö. (2022). Kent İmgesinin Yapıtaşı Olarak Sokaklarda Mekânsal Zenginliğin Fraktal Geometri ile Analizi. Kent Akademisi, 15(3), 1341-1358.
• Öztürk, S., and Işınkaralar, Ö. (2019). Kastamonu kent merkezinde otopark sorunsalı: Eleştirel bir değerlendirme. Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, 12(67), 506-511.
• Isinkaralar, O., and Varol, C. (2023). A cellular automata-based approach for spatio-temporal modeling of the city center as a complex system: The case of Kastamonu, Türkiye. Cities, 132, 104073.
• Cetin, M., Onac, A. K., Sevik, H., and Sen, B. (2019). Temporal and regional change of some air pollution parameters in Bursa. Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, 12(3), 311-316.