Kentlere yaşanan yoğun göç ve insan aktivitelerinin artmasıyla birlikte çevre sorunlarında da artış gerçekleşmiştir. Geçim sıkıntıları, eğitim, iş bulma gibi faktörler kırsal alanlardan kentlere göçün artmasına neden olmuştur. Yaşanan bu yoğun göç sonucunda kentlerde gecekondulaşma, sağlıksız yapılaşma, kötü çevre koşulları, çarpık kentleşme, alt yapı yetersizliği gibi sorunlar ortaya çıkmıştır. Dünya’da ve Türkiye’de çarpık kentleşme ve gecekondulaşmanın önüne geçilememiş ve hızlı bir şekilde artmıştır. Tüm bu mevcut sorunlara en kısa sürede ve sağlıklı bir şekilde çözüm üretilmesi arayışları kentsel dönüşüm olgusunu gündeme getirmiştir. Kentsel dönüşümle mevcut olan tüm çöküntü alanlarının kente yeniden kazandırılması amaç edinilmiştir. Ülkemizde kentsel dönüşüm denilince akla ilk gelen kente sağlıklı ve yaşanılabilir bir alan kazandırmak için gecekondu alanlarının yıkılmasıdır.  Ancak, ülkemizdeki kentsel dönüşüm süreci gerek proje aşamasında gerekse uygulama aşamasında sadece yapılı çevrenin yenilenerek dönüşümüne odaklanmıştır ve ekolojik boyuttan yoksundur. Kentsel dönüşüm projeleri yapılırken hem kullanıcıların isteklerini karşılayıp hem de doğayla uyumlu ve çevre duyarlı projelerin geliştirilmesine özen gösterilmelidir. Bu makalede, kentsel dönüşüm projelerine ekolojik boyut kazandırılması üzerine değerlendirmeler yapılmaktadır.

As a result of the transition from nomadic life to settled life, small-scale settlement areas have gradually grown and settlement areas of various sizes have been formed from neighborhood scale to urban scale. Migration from rural areas to urban areas started due to problems such as livelihoods, education and employment, and housing problems emerged with the migration. The biggest trigger of migration is the job opportunities created by the industrialization process in the cities. As a result of intensive migration to cities and increasing human activities, environmental problems have also increased. The Industrial Revolution brought the modern urbanization phenomenon in the western countries but revealed the problem of slum which is an unhealthy structure for the less developed countries. With the slums, problems such as unhealthy construction in cities, bad environmental conditions, distorted urbanization and lack of infrastructure have arisen. Slums are mostly seen in big and developed cities. In the big cities in our country, the slums have gradually increased and become unblockable. The law was enacted in 1948 to prevent the slum and in the 1950s, a rapid transformation process was initiated to eliminate the slum problem in our country. In this transformation process, cities continued to grow by ignoring the areas with disaster risks, natural environment, cultural and historical environment. The search for a solution to all these problems in a short time and in a healthy way has brought the phenomenon of urban transformation into the agenda. With the urban transformation, it is aimed to regain all the collapse areas existing in the city. Urban transformation projects have been initiated by local administrations in cities to solve the problems of squatters and distorted urbanization. Urban transformation; as a comprehensive and integrated action, to improve the physical, social, economic and environmental conditions of an area. Although urban transformation is a concept that incorporates all of the practices for renewing the existing structure of the city, many different views have emerged in the forms of implementation. According to Keleş (1998), if the objectives of urban transformation are listed; spatial cleaning, regeneration, renewal, revitalization, rehabilitation and gentrification. Urban transformation projects need to be planned with an ecological approach to provide people with a healthy and quality living space. However, the urban transformation process in our country focuses only on the renewal and transformation of the built environment both in the project phase and in the implementation phase and lacks the ecological dimension. While urban transformation projects are carried out, care must be taken not only to meet the demands of the users but also to develop environmentally friendly and environmentally sensitive projects. An ecological urban transformation project should include ecological planning, ecological urban design and ecological building design decisions. All of the decisions to be taken during the planning and design stage constitute the infrastructure of the other stages. Therefore, bringing ecological dimension to urban transformation projects is important as the basic approach that should be adopted in order to build livable and sustainable cities. In this article, comprehensive evaluations are made and suggestions are made on bringing ecological dimension to urban transformation projects in the fiction presented above.