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Co-creating a Livable, Low-Carbon Future in Caferağa

2nd July 2025
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In Istanbul’s Caferağa neighborhood, WRI Türkiye led a community-driven initiative to create a more sustainable, inclusive and livable urban environment. From April 2023 to July 2024, the Livable Caferağa project worked closely with residents to understand the neighborhood’s challenges around overcrowding, rising heat and pollution, and develop a set of responsive solutions.  

For several years, the WRI Türkiye Deep Dives team in Istanbul has worked closely with the city to advance neighborhood-scale active mobility planning. Istanbul is currently pursuing a citywide Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), which provides a broad framework for how the city can achieve a range of goals — from ensuring affordable, low-carbon public transport to encouraging a shift toward zero-carbon modes like walking and bicycling.

Creating Sustainable Cities

Through its Deep Dives initiative, WRI Ross Center works in a deep and sustained way with a network of cities to develop both long-term relationships and solutions to entrenched urban challenges. 

Explore the initiative. 

Within this strategy, Caferağa was selected as a priority area for developing a low-emission zone. As a key cultural and tourism hub in the city, the neighborhood faces increasing pressure from traffic and congestion. To support the SUMP’s implementation, WRI Türkiye focused its Deep Dive efforts on creating a plan that would balance Caferağa’s cultural vibrancy with the city’s goals of emissions reductions, sustainable mobility and livability.   

Empowering Communities to Shape a More Livable Space

Recognizing that Caferağa’s residents were bearing the consequences of overcrowding and pollution — including exposure to traffic fumes and limited mobility on crowded sidewalks, especially for older adults, people with disabilities and parents with young children — the Deep Dive project team put the community at the center of developing livable and sustainable solutions. Through a broad outreach and engagement campaign with residents, local organizations, metropolitan and district officials, researchers and NGO representatives, the WRI Türkiye team gathered a range of perspectives and insights to guide the creation of the Livable Caferağa plan.  

Beginning in July 2023, the WRI Türkiye team hosted a series of training sessions with community members and key stakeholders to build a strong and collective foundation of knowledge on how to create livable, climate-resilient neighborhoods. These sessions explored key aspects of pedestrian safety, active mobility planning and data-driven decision-making.

Together, the WRI Türkiye team and Caferağa stakeholders examined best practices for improving public spaces, balancing the needs of residents and visitors, mitigating climate challenges like extreme heat and implementing effective urban policies that support sustainable mobility. 

A snapshot from the Criteria Development Workshop where participants collaboratively evaluated thematic criteria for active mobility planning in the Caferağa neighborhood. Image by WRI Türkiye

The project also included four workshops hosted by the WRI Türkiye team in September 2023, accompanied by a pilot demonstration of pedestrian safety and public space enhancement solutions in Caferağa’s Mehmet Ayvalıtaş Square. Each workshop addressed a specific aspect of urban livability:

  • Establishing criteria for an optimal neighborhood environment.
  • Addressing the needs of people with disabilities.
  • Understanding and mitigating urban heat islands.  
  • Drawing inspiration from peer cities for improving livability.  

5 Local Solutions for Developing Caferağa’s Future

Through these regular capacity-building and engagement activities and workshops, the WRI Türkiye team co-created five key solutions for the district:

  1. Prioritizing pedestrian space — by widening sidewalks, adding accessibility ramps and improving crosswalk visibility, for example — to enhance safety and encourage sustainable travel.  
  2. Creating a cohesive micromobility strategy with a robust neighborhood network and clear guidelines for bicycle and scooter parking.  
  3. Expanding public transit access with a new community shuttle service to help cut down on congestion and improve air quality.
  4. Developing a thoughtful approach to parking restrictions — such as limiting on-street parking and prioritizing space for residents — in the district to support sustainability and livability.
  5. Optimizing local deliveries by establishing new schedules and loading zones, while encouraging the use of cargo bicycles for local services.  

These strategies, now being formalized into a comprehensive plan, aim to preserve Caferağa’s vibrancy while addressing overcrowding and strengthening environmental resilience. Some, like the expansion of public transportation with the new ModaBüs shuttle service, will come as soon as the fourth quarter of 2025, while others, like revitalizing pedestrian spaces, will be tackled on an ongoing routine basis.  

By involving the community at every step of the development process, the WRI Türkiye team ensured that the solutions were responsive to the needs and expectations of Caferağa’s residents, and that the community felt a sense of ownership over the plan.  

What’s Next for Deep Dives in Istanbul?  

The success of this Deep Dive Cities project will inform the next phase of the initiative, which will expand to focus on the entire Kadıköy district. In 2025 and 2026, the WRI Türkiye team will investigate nature-based solutions (NBS) for mitigating urban heat islands, building on the foundation established in Caferağa. With the aim to develop a comprehensive concept plan — complete with pilot applications — for integrating NBS into urban mobility projects, WRI will explore how these solutions can be embedded across Kadıköy’s urban mobility planning.  

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