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The future of post-disaster reconstruction may run through an ancient metropolis founded by a general of Alexander the Great. The city of Antakya, known in antiquity as Antioch, was devastated last year in the strongest earthquakes to strike Turkey in more than eight decades. The consortium behind a masterplan to rebuild the city hopes it will become a worldwide model for renewal of urban centers that have suffered the trauma of widespread destruction.
The grim reality is that this is likely to be a growth area in coming years. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East will necessitate large-scale reconstruction at some stage, with places such as Mariupol and Gaza City in ruins. Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton, which slammed into Florida this month, is a reminder of the economic cost of natural disasters, with damage and losses estimated at up to $100 billion — just two weeks after Hurricane Helene tore through several U.S. states causing more than 200 deaths. Longer term, the climate crisis is raising the risk that more urban environments will be rendered unlivable as rising temperatures intensify the impact of events such as storms and wildfires.
“It’s a huge problem and no one is focused on that,” Furkan Demirci, chairman of the Türkiye Design Council, told me in an interview recently in London, which he was visiting to attend a design forum. Post-disaster cities “looks like a niche subject but it’s not,” he said. “We live in a world of disasters, a world of wars. The climate crisis will eradicate cities. As human civilizations we need to learn again how to rebuild our cities.”
The February 2023 earthquakes destroyed about 80% of the buildings in Antakya, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in the city and surrounding area living in temporary shelters made from shipping container-shaped boxes and in tents. The city is the capital of Hatay province, a stub of southeastern Turkey wedged between the Syrian border and the Mediterranean. This was one of the worst affected areas in the quakes, which killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey. The government put the cost of the damage at more than $100 billion, or about 9% of gross domestic product.
The Türkiye Design Council, a nongovernmental organization founded in 2016, assembled an international consortium of more than 30 experts across multiple disciplines to work on the rebuilding project, including U.K. architects Foster + Partners Ltd. and Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG.
The revitalization vision unveiled by Foster + Partners this summer embodies features designed to strengthen the resilience of the city, including creating green buffer zones around the Asi river and other watercourses to shift buildings away from areas that are more vulnerable to seismic activity. This will have the secondary effect of protecting against flooding, as the green zones provide more opportunity for water to run off. The city has been laid out on an urban block system, with each district having its own high streets, schools, public gardens and courtyards.
