This paper examines how planning law and governance arrangements shape the spatial and social outcomes of urban transformation in Türkiye through the case of the Göztepe Risky Area in Bağcılar, Istanbul. Since the enactment of Law No. 6306 on the Transformation of Areas Under Disaster Risk, urban restructuring has increasingly been organised through legal categories such as risky buildings, risky areas, and reserve building areas. While these instruments have enabled stronger intervention in vulnerable urban areas, more importantly they have reorganised the scale, authority, and territorial logic through which planning decisions are produced and translated into statutory plans and implementation frameworks.

Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, document-based case-study approach, combining the analysis of statutory and policy frameworks with the examination of planning and implementation documents prepared for the Göztepe Risky Area. The paper argues that parcel-based and structure-led redevelopment tends to produce fragmented spatial outcomes, including density increase, pressure on infrastructure, and limited capacity to provide public open space and social facilities in an integrated manner. By contrast, area-based and neighbourhood-scale planning offers a more comprehensive framework for coordinating implementation phasing, urban design, infrastructure provision, and the spatial organisation of public amenities.

The paper further argues that the social outcomes of area-based transformation should not be understood only through the conventional language of in-situ transformation. They should also be evaluated in relation to the forms of social restructuring generated by redevelopment itself. These include the risk of capital-led exclusion, differentiated capacities of existing residents to remain in or return to the transformed area, the demands of adapting to denser and more regulated collective housing environments, and the gradual weakening of close-knit neighbourhood relations as everyday social contact becomes less immediate and more formalised. In this sense, the paper conceptualises the ethics of scale as a planning problem, showing that the scale of intervention shapes not only urban form but also the conditions of collective urban life, socio-spatial justice, and the legitimacy of planning practice.

The paper contributes to debates on planning law, ethics, and governance by demonstrating that a just transformation process requires not only statutory authority and coordinated implementation, but also critical attention to how new spatial and institutional arrangements reorganise everyday life, neighbourhood relations, and the distribution of urban value.