Since the beginning of the millennium, there have been many natural and human-caused catastrophes and biological disasters worldwide. These extraordinary events, which caused great human losses and material damage, resulted in difficult times for societies. The world has become more and more urban, that is, more than half of the population has started to live in cities, which has led to these settlements not being able to control the pace of urbanization. This issue has caused negativities such as careless spatial planning in cities, inadequacy of infrastructure and superstructure elements, pollution, and depletion of the environment and resources, thus making the city vulnerable and fragile against external threats. In order for cities to be more resilient, healthy, and immune, the factors that affect settlements and cause crises need to be analyzed well. In fact, the transformation of climate and environmental problems, economy, finance, energy, housing, or food inadequacies into major crises in cities is due to flaws in urban governance and planning, and the failure to create a structure resilience to natural and human-made, or technological and biological disasters.

This book is a walk along the relatively less traveled paths of the theme of urban crisis. The book aims to emphasize that cities have other problem areas that cause crises, in addition to natural disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes, or biological disasters such as pandemics. The book primarily focuses on the concept of urban crisis and the urban models of the age of crises. Then, some urban crisis problems were mentioned, the issues were defined within the conceptual framework, and for some crises, an aspect of the issue was pointed out. For example, while the water crisis in settlements is addressed in the context of spatial planning, the issue of ecological security in cities is evaluated from the perspective of neighborhoods. The crisis of individual freedoms in cities was examined by focusing on data privacy, CCTV, and secure sites. The importance of international cooperation networks between cities has been emphasized in order to build urban resilience against crises that go beyond city limits and reach regional and global dimensions. The nutritional crisis in human settlements was emphasized and solutions were offered on how to overcome the problem and the sustainability of food production. The phenomenon of the housing crisis in cities is defined, and information is given about the factors that cause this crisis and some practices aimed at solving the crisis. Finally, the issue of natural disasters was discussed, and the Turkish example was examined in the context of disaster management and social state practices in cities.