About Us

Prof. Sadettin Okten City Thinking Center, founded by Esenler Municipality and launched in 2012 as the first in its field, is a thinking platform that brings together academic knowledge and urban practices and conducts studies on the city. The main goal of the center is to develop approaches to urban life by approaching it on a human scale and taking into account social processes, to conduct studies that will put the national and international projects produced into practice, and to carry out all its work in cooperation with academia and city administration.

Under the guidance of a scientific board, activities such as workshops, symposiums, panels, seminars, projects, etc. are organized and carried out in this center, where urbanism studies are carried out. Trips to exemplary cities (Barcelona, Astana, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Beirut, etc.) are organized for technical study, and publications are prepared to create a literature on urbanism in parallel with these studies.

The Center, which has expanded its activities, moved to its new location in the  July 15th National Garden in 2020. In this center there is a city library with about 2800 books on urbanism, meeting rooms and offices for urbanism studies. Another mission of the center is to follow national and international grant and funding programs, competitions, congresses and other studies in the field of urbanism and to be involved in all kinds of activities that will benefit Esenler district.

Since the day it started its activities, it has collaborated with 471 academics from 141 faculties, and these collaborations are increasing day by day. In addition, during this period, 25 workshops have been held, 27 publications have been published, including 5 guides to urbanism, and 7 master’s and doctoral theses have been supported. The 19th issue of the Journal of City and Thought and our other publications were made available to readers free of charge in print and digital form. Our publications are sent free of charge by subscription to nearly 2 thousand people and points consisting of public institutions, non-governmental organizations working in the field of urbanism, universities, local governments, libraries, writers, academics and researchers. In addition, these requirements are also met by institutions and organizations that request to use it as a resource. Our center, which continues to work on permanent solutions for the city; City of the Future, International Urban Transformation Symposium, International City and Non-Governmental Organizations Summit, III. City Writers and Academics Meetings with the main theme of City and Epidemic, etc. brings together scientists by organizing a series of national and international ev