FROM FORCE TO FORM: AN ANALYSIS OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD
MORPHOLOGY OF ISTANBUL 1950–2010
Nil Tuzcu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
School of Architecture and Planning
1. Introduction
Istanbul is a hybrid and fragmented city that is best described by its multilayered historical
developments. The inherent complexity of the city’s urban form constitutes a challenge for excavating
the layers of history with their multitude of underlying social and political events. Shaped by a constant
influence of in-betweenness throughout its history and subjected to rapid urbanization policies during
the modern era, Istanbul hardly conforms to a coherent morphological model. An overwhelming body
of work1 examines macro-scale development patterns of the city in the last sixty years, and yet, the
existing research fails to provide insights about the constant change of the city’s physical fabric.
This paper argues that understanding the operational modes of Istanbul’s urban growth requires an
examination at the scale of neighborhood, or mahalle, the fundamental sociocultural entities of the city.
The organic and irregular fabric of Istanbul has been shaped by the traditional urban social system of
the mahalle, the smallest administrative unit of the Ottoman land governance system. Mahalles grew
organically around religious cores and social institutions such as kulliyes, hence the strong social ties of
the mahalle community was at the center of the organization of private and social life of the city. The
irregular street patterns in Istanbul are results of this organic growth, reinforced by the Islamic doctrine
of privacy (mahrem) implemented in the form of maximum segregation of individual houses (Celik,
1986). Today, one can still observe the same organization in many contemporary neighborhoods that
Gul, Murat (2009) The Emergence of Modern Istanbul: Transformation and Modernization of a City. London and New
York: I.B.Tauris.
Erman, T. (1997). Squatter (gecekondu) housing versus apartment housing: Turkish rural-to-urban migrant
residents' perspectives. Habitat International, 21(1), 91.
Sarkis, H., & Turan, N. (2009). A Turkish triangle: Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir at the gates of Europe. Cambridge,
Mass.: Aga Khan Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, c2009.
1
emerged during the last sixty years of urban growth. During the same period, in parallel to rapid
industrialization of the city, many other neighborhoods have also been constructed according to
modern planning practices. The main motivation of this paper is to understand these differing mahalle
morphologies through a comparative analysis of districts, in contrast to previous studies that
overwhelmingly rely on a descriptive approach, focusing on a particular area. I compare the
morphology of four neighborhoods that represent distinct timeframes and sociopolitical events from
1950 to present day: Zeytinburnu, one of the first squatter neighborhoods (gecekondu) that emerged in
1950s Istanbul as a result of the first wave of internal migration from the rural Anatolia; Kagithane,
another gecekondu neighborhood shaped by chain emigration during late 1950s and 1960s; Bahcelievler,
a neighborhood developed through modern urban planning practices in 1970s and transformed from
a low-density “garden city” into a high-density settlement as a reaction to rapid population growth
after 1980s; and Sultangazi, one of the newest settlements developed in 2000s Istanbul in accordance
with urban sprawl towards the northwest.
Figure 1: The four districts
examined in this paper are
shown on the map. Prevalent in
Kagithane and Zeytinburnu are
old buildings taken over by
squatters, a pattern that
emerged in these
neighborhoods after 1950s.
Bahcelievler and Sultangazi
were developed according to
planning decisions made during
the 1970s and the 2000s
respectively.
Figure 1 shows the district boundaries of the neighborhoods I have selected for this paper. I use Ilhan
Tekeli’s (2010) widely accepted model for urban development in Turkey, which examines the growth
of the city after the republican era in three periods: radical modernity (1923–1950), which reflects
the building of the nation-state; post–World War II (1950–1980); and globalization (1980 to the
present) during which Turkey has made a marked shift to neoliberal economic policies. In my study,
I focus on the development of selected neighborhoods in Istanbul during the latter two periods, when
broader political and economic forces shaped the identity of the city’s rapidly growing landscape.
2. Related Research
The methodological framework of this paper is based on the body of research that considers the
formation, transformation and characteristics of urban form. In the morphology literature, scholars
focus on various features of urban structures and conduct comparative analyses in multiple scales.
Ryan (2005) analyzes the morphological transformation of residential redevelopments built between
1990 and 2000 in Detroit (U.S.A.) and compares them with existing housing projects. He examines
certain housing projects based on dwelling density and mix, lot coverage, street-block and lot design,
and land mix. His morphological analysis reveals that the newer housing redevelopments were built
with suburban characteristics, indicating a process of inner-city suburbanization. Siksna’s research
(1996) focuses on block size and form comparison in twelve North American and Australian cities.
According to this qualitative and quantitative analysis of selected urban areas, urban development is
affected by block morphology in terms of land parceling, circulation, land use and coherence of urban
fabric. Khirfan’s research (2010) differs from other studies as she focuses on a single parameter in her
analysis of multiple urban sites. She compares historical layers of different cities in terms of street
networks, public open space and civic structures. For example, Khirfan uses geographical information
system (GIS) to analyze street networks of selected sites, and the mapping outputs are combined with
qualitative analysis of urban design and planning for selected periods.
Because there is a significant need for new data to update GIS databases, a large body of research
focuses on the methods and tools for extracting urban elements—buildings, road networks or open
spaces—from high-resolution aerial images (Hinz and Baumgartner, 2003; Lillesand and Kiefer, 2008;
Mayer, 1999). Besides automated object recognition, some research also studies the morphological
attributes of the urban object by combining their methods with GIS (Peeters and Etzion, 2002).
Besides measuring street, block and land-use patterns, some studies focus on architectural aspects of
urban morphology. For example, Sanders and Woodward (2015) analyze the formation of streetscape
by evaluating architectural configurations, including by using quantitative assessment of architectural
elements on street elevations and of building footprints.
Building on the previous studies, I provide an account of morphological characteristics for the
selected neighborhoods with a particular focus on land use and street networks. Certain commonalities
and distinctions are evident: Zeytinburnu and Kagithane are characterized by small and scattered land
parcels—a remnant of gecekondu settlements that once dominated these neighborhoods—whereas
Bahcelievler and Sultangazi consist of larger and more regular parcels. Street networks reflect a similar
pattern: the latter two areas are developed more or less as grids, whereas it is hard to read such form
in the chaotic network of Zeytinburnu and Kagithane. My motivation is to apply formal analysis
methods to certain neighborhood features, and to gain a deeper understanding of the urban fabric
through a comparison between neighborhood morphologies. For this purpose, following a brief
descriptive analysis of each neighborhood, I present a series of maps that visualize the relative indexes
of parcel area, parcel orientation, street network regularity and building stock regularity. To
account for these features I examine smaller samples through conventional methods, and introduce a
computational method for producing larger-scale maps. The proposed method, which uses visual
pattern matching techniques, allows extracting morphological indexes from source maps and serializes
map production. Implementation details of this computational method are presented in Appendix 1.
3. Istanbul’s Urban Growth
The population in Istanbul grew from one million in 1950 to five million in 1980 and to ten million
in 2000. Figure 2 illustrates the growth of Istanbul’s built-up area from the nineteenth century to 2000.
By 1950, Istanbul’s built-up area had expanded along the east-west axis, and between 1950 and 1970,
the city expanded further due to extensive immigrant influx. This expansion occurred in the form of
informal settlements constructed mostly on the peripheries of Istanbul. With the opening of two
bridges spanning the Bosporus waterway in 1973 and 1988, urban sprawl dominated the south-north
axis. By 1990, the pattern of the built area revealed uncontrolled expansion through the forests and
water reservoirs of Istanbul. In 2000s, the built-up area spread further outwards on the European and
Asian sides of town in form of gated communities for the wealthiest of the city’s population and mass
housing settlements for middle- and low-income classes (Güvenc & Ünlü-Yücesoy, 2009).
Following the republican transformation, the first period of Istanbul’s development reflects the rise
of the nation-state, beginning with the formation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and continuing
until 1950. The era is characterized by construction of railroads and by state-led industrialization
programs. New regulations also brought a modernist framework that legitimized urban development,
and city plans were prepared as required by new municipal laws. (Bozdogan, 2001)
The second phase of urban development took place from 1950, following World War II, through the
1980s. Istanbul was restructured by external forces such as a new political order in the world economy
and aid from the Marshall Plan, as well as by internal factors such as Turkey’s transformation into a
multi-party democracy and the nation’s import-substituting policies. These changes to the political
economy of Turkey led to rapid industrialization and urbanization. Mechanization of agriculture and
new labor markets in cities led to a massive influx of rural immigrants into cities. This postwar-induced
development model transformed the spatial structure of Istanbul, where the physical and economic
infrastructures were not ready for rapid population increase. Migrants from rural areas had two options
for housing: most created illegal housing settlements on the peripheries of industrial areas, while a
small number moved into inner-city areas abandoned by minority communities who emigrated from
Turkey with the rise of nationalism during the republican era.
Figure 2: Urban
growth of Istanbul
between the
nineteenth century
and 2000. From
Urban Age
Conference.
Migrants constructed unauthorized dwellings, gecekondu, on both private and state-owned land on the
periphery of the city. Besides resulting in the growth of illegal housing settlements, rural-urban
migration also changed overall mechanisms of the city. Because the government did not provide
certain necessary resources to immigrants, they created solutions themselves: An informal transit
network consisting of shared taxis that travel designated routes and informal labor market emerged to
fill gaps in public services (Tekeli, 2010). After the 1950s, the informal settlements created a pull factor
for further immigration because they provided social relations and community support for newcomers
(Keyder, 2005 and Erman, 1997). Because of increasing land prices, the middle class also faced housing
scarcity during the postwar era from the 1950s to 1980s; thus another housing type called the “build-
and-sell” system emerged during this period. In this system, small-capital owners or contractors
worked as middlemen between landowners and potential buyers of the apartment buildigns. The buildand-sell system resulted in the massive growth of apartment buildings, thereby sharply changing the
city’s residential fabric.
The period from the 1980s until the present is considered the globalization era in Turkish economy
and society. Prior to the 1980s, the Turkish economy was state-led, and during the eighties, lawmakers
adopted liberal policies that shifted Turkey to a market-oriented economy. Rapid liberalization of the
economy and privatization of sectors brought financial flow and transnational investments to the
country. Transformation of socioeconomic structures brought new consumption patterns and
lifestyles, which created global elites as a new social group in Istanbul. The spatial character of the city
has also started to evolve in accordance with globalized consumption habits and lifestyles of this new
social group.
High-rise residences, gated communities and shopping malls with global brands are spatial reflections
of the new global era. Gokturk is a former agricultural village surrounded by state-owned forests and
military sites in the northwest of Istanbul and represents a major example of the mode of development
common in the globalization era. More than thirty gated communities have been constructed in the
Gokturk area since the 1990s when real-estate developers realized the potential of the area for highend housing. More than 30 gated communities have constructed beginning from 1990s when the real
estate developers realized the potential of the area for high-end housing. The original inhabitants of
the village benefit from the gated communities as an emerging service sector—they are employed as
housekeepers and gardeners (Candan & Kolluoglu, 2008).
Globalization has also led to a decentralization of industry and made Istanbul a multi-center city. New
office towers and high-rise residences began to appear on the Levent-Maslak axis, where sufficient
land and easy access to two bridges and their belt highways were available (Tokatli & Boyaci, 1999).
Thus Istanbul demonstrates the well-known pattern of social and spatial segregation common in
global cities dominated by the dismantling of Fordist balances (Onis, 2010).
Zeytinburnu: The Squatter Metropolis
Besides the social and economic processes resulting from immigration and evolutions in national
policy, large-scale urban intervention has significantly affected the morphological development of
Istanbul. The first major urban intervention took place in the 1950s with a modern Haussmanian
vision. According to this plan, new highways were built causing a massive demolition of historically
significant structures of Ottoman era. The new coastal road along the Marmara shore supported the
formation of an industrial zone in those areas and accelerated the city’s expansion towards the west
(Bozdogan and Akcan, 2012).
Figure 3 (a) A street in the Gokalp neighborhood of
Zeytinburnu. (b) Typical street network of Zeytinburnu.
Formed by rural migrants, Zeytinburnu district was the first squatter settlement located along the
coastal road.
Today, Zeytinburnu district consists of twelve neighborhoods, most of which were developed as
gecekondu. (Kazlicesme is separated from the rest by a historical railway and is excluded in this present
study). Figure 3a shows a typical streetscape in the Gokalp neighborhood of Zeytinburnu. The most
visible remnants of past gecekondu settlements are narrow, curving streets. Surrounding this dense street
network are multi-story apartment buildings, which arose after the 1980s, the highly eclectic
architectural typologies in Zeytinburnu reflect the build-and-sell system (as explained in the previous
section) that dominated the transformation of the district.
The street network of Zeytinburnu is a compound of individual segments that grew organically
alongside squatter housing following World War II and prior to 1980 (Figure 3b). We see a
topographically driven pattern that was negotiated individually by each settler. The average width of
streets cannot accommodate sidewalk pavement, parking lots or urban furniture. Constructed at
various moments during a thirty-year span, the current building stock reflects a highly varied and
possibly disorienting character. Some buildings exhibit balconies, others dismiss them; some use the
ground floor for commercial purposes, others reserve it for residential use. And each building
maximally fills its lot. Rather than clear concentrations of commercial and residential zones, we see a
mixed land-use pattern, generated particularly by bottom-up decisions on the use of the ground floor.
Kagithane: Gecekondu Behind the Boulevard
In addition to shaping the built environment in the 1950s, immigration from rural areas to Istanbul
led to the creation of an immigrant network that provided community support for newcomers and
eventually caused extensive chain migration (Keyder, 1999). Construction of new main roads led to
rapid urbanization in the city, as well as expansion of squatter settlements. The opening of Barbaros
Boulevard in 1958 accelerated the northern expansion of the city, which resulted in the formation of
more informal settlements along the northern axis. Kagithane was one of the informal settlements
resulting from a continued influx of rural-urban immigration and the launch of the boulevard.
Akin to that of Zeytinburnu, Kagithane’s urban fabric is imprinted with organic development patterns
of gecekondu and many gecekondu units have been preserved until the present day. Therefore, the
Kagithane street network consists of more fragmented and disassociated segments than those in
Zeytinburnu (Figure 4b). Isolated from other neighborhoods by major highways and boulevards,
Kagithane’s streets loop within the neighborhood, forming curved edges, and often these streets are
without pavement. The shape and size of parcels varies greatly because the land is used for a range of
purposes: from residential to commercial to industrial. The ground floor of many residential buildings
serve as small workshops, storehouses or other related industrial units. As a result of this complex use
of land, we often observed open space within the building stock. In most cases these lands are
informally appropriated as public spaces, serving as parking garages and playgrounds—neither of
which are otherwise available to these communities.
Figure 4 (a) A street in the Gultepe neighborhood in
Kagithane. (b) Typical street network in Kagithane.
Bahcelievler: The New Suburb
The “suburbanization” model of the post-war era began to appear on the Turkish urban landscape
with the political shift after the 1970s, and Bahcelievler is one of the first examples of this model in
Istanbul (Gul, 2009). The neighborhood is mostly residential, supported by retail and commercial
blocks concentrated around the major axis of the highway E5. From an urban design standpoint,
Bahcelievler reflects the spatial implications of American suburban ideas, as well as the structure of
modern-planning practices. Accordingly, it was built on a grid schema. However the schema in
Bahcelievler differs greatly from the “ideal” grid of western cities as it also bears the morphological
character of Turkish neighborhoods with their narrow streets and four- to five-story apartment
buildings. Bahcesehir (or “garden city”) is therefore a hybrid of the American suburb and the Turkish
mahalle. Grid-based planning has provided considerably large pavements on the street network and
allocated parking spaces (Figure 5a). Another implication of the suburban model in Bahcelievler is the
inclusion of street landscape such as trees and plants as part of street development.
Figure 5 (a) A street from Sirinevler neighborhood in
Bahcelievler. (b) Typical street network of Bahcelievler.
Sultangazi: The immigrant Grid
Until the 1990s, the pattern of the built area in Istanbul was shaped by major urban interventions such
as bridges, roadways and transportation systems together with social and economic restructurings.
However, by 1990s an uncontrolled expansion has moved development towards the forests and water
reservoirs of the city. Between the 1990s and 2000s, this spread to the outskirts of the city has been
supported by new municipal laws and administrative systems (Uzun, 2010). Sultangazi is one
residential settlements emerging from this new sprawl model. Through state-led intervention, the
district also became home for immigrants and different ethnic groups in the city. Currently, the
population is dominated by the Kurdish minority communities who were forced to immigrate to
Istanbul from their villages in the southeast of Turkey. The morphology of the area represents a hybrid
formation distinct from that of Bahcelievler: a planned grid street network with squatter housing on
the parcels. This unique hybridity is a result of the new municipal system, in which master plans of
the districts only consist of building the grid-like system without planning the land use patterns and
parcel characteristics.
Figure 6 (a) A street in Sultangazi (b) Typical street
network in Sultangazi.
Socioeconomic and Demographic Conditions of Case-Study Areas
Table 1 documents some of the socioeconomic and demographic conditions of the case-study
districts. In terms of population density, Bahcelievler district is the most densely populated area
among the four districts. While density levels of Zeytinburnu and Kagithane are similar, that of
Sultangazi is considerable lower than the other three districts. Zeytinburnu, Bahcelievler and
Kagithane are similar in terms of average household size and percentage of population that is
illiterate. Based on the life-quality index (LQI), Zeytinburnu and Sultangazi show similar rates,
whereas Kagithane’s and Bahcelievler’s rates are similar to each other, but significantly higher than
those of Sultangazi.
District Name
Year
Population Area (sq km) Pp per sq km Household size Literate
Illiterate
Formed
ZEYTINBURNU
1957
292,313
11.59
25.22
3.87
239,230
7,219
KAGITHANE
1987
428,755
14.87
28.83
3.61
362,328
9,428
BAHCELIEVLER 1992
602,931
16.62
36.28
3.6
507,582
13,292
SULTANGAZI
505,190
36,3
13,92
4.24
239,230
14,604
2008
Table 1: Socioeconomic and Demographic comparison of selected districts
4. Comparison of Neighborhood Morphologies
My individual examinations of morphological characteristics of the selected neighborhoods indicate
strong interactions between the urban fabric and underlying political and economic activities that took
place during the development of neighborhoods. These areas share many features on the street level,
such as the organic street networks of Zeytinburnu and Kagithane, which are historically gecekondu
neighborhoods, and the grids of Sultangazi and Bahcesehir, which are state-led urban developments.
However, their similarities and differences are not documented in the descriptive research currently
available, which begs the question, What morphological indexes can be used to compare and contrast
such complex urban areas? Can I show, in a rigorous manner, the ways in which these neighborhoods
carry the spatial signatures of their era, and how those signatures differ from each other? In this
section, I present a series of comparative maps that depict key morphological characteristics of each
neighborhood. Drawing from the morphology literature regarding street networks and building stock,
I propose four indexes of neighborhood features: parcel area is the index of relative size of the land
between streets regardless of their built and unbuilt portions; parcel orientation is a normalized
measure of general orientations of building facades; street network regularity is the measure of how
much a street network conforms to a grid schema; and finally, building stock regularity is the relative
index of the diversity of built and unbuilt areas versus the geometrical uniformity of buildings within
a parcel. I have sought to visualize quantitative data on these morphological features so that
neighborhoods can be compared with one another. Each set of maps utilizes a color spectrum from
green to red to represent a continuum between two characteristics. For example, a map can show the
extent to which a feature, like the grid, is present or not present—with red indicating that an area has
a clear grid, and green indicating streets are not arranged on a grid. The color index can also depict a
continuum between two different characteristics, such the extent to which a parcel is vertical or
horizontal. The exception is the building-stock regularity map, which depicts the degree of regularity
from black to white. Also each map is oriented according to the district’s major vertical and horizontal
axes versus cardinal directions; these axes have greater impact on how districts function, and therefore
offer a clearer basis for comparison. In sum, my approach to visualizing data allows us to understand
the degree to which each neighborhood evidences certain morphological features, and to compare
these traits across neighborhoods.
Street Network Regularity
Comparative Map 1 shows street network regularity for the selected neighborhoods. The major
purpose of this map is to reveal irregular and regular development patterns spatially. As historically
gecekondu neighborhoods, Zeytinburnu and Kagithane tend toward irregular development and
therefore have large green areas. Bahcelievler and Sultangazi, on the other hand, have more red areas,
which indicate more “regular” development patterns. Beyond this basic distinction, we can see that
Zeytinburnu is much closer to a regular pattern than Kagithane despite their historical similarity. On
the other hand, Zeytinburnu underwent a transformation that removed all squatter housing, while
Kagithane still has many squatter houses. The state-led transformation in Zeytinburnu appears to have
resulted in a regular framework over the existing irregular one.
The Sultangazi map illustrates the most regular street pattern by far. This outcome is intuitive, as
Sultangazi is the newest neighborhood in my case study, and was built according to official municipal
master plans. Bahcelievler is not so different, as it was also built on a modern grid schema. However,
the bounding effect of major highways around Bahcelievler introduces a few irregular patches not
present in Sultangazi. From this observation, it can be argued that there is always a negotiation between
a planning strategy and the existing urban structure. In particular, the color patterns reveal traces of
the bottom-up negotiations that took place in Zeytinburnu and Kagithane and the top-down planning
practices in Bahcelievler and Sultangazi. Rather than realizing a prescribed “ideal” in the city, urban
development in Istanbul has yield hybrid formations unique to the needs, limitations and resources of
each neighborhood.
Comparative Map 1: Street Network Regularity. The continuum between grid and non-grid is depicted in this map using
a spectrum from red to purple. Red and orange areas are those organized by planning grids, while green represents “nongrid” areas. In the map, Zeytinburnu and Kagithane districts reflect their squatter housing past in their current street
network. The dominant green patches indicates the lack of a grid network in these neighborhoods. On the other hand,
Bahcelievler and Sultangazi are dominantly red and therefore more regular or grid like.
Comparative Map 2: Parcel Orientations. This map shows a continuum between vertical and horizontal parcel
orientation.
Parcel Orientation
Comparative Map 2 complements the map of street network regularity by shining light on another
aspect of street-level uniformity: parcel orientation. In order to arrive at a relative measure of
orientation, each district is aligned along its major axis, normalizing the average vertical and horizontal
orientations of the parcels. This time, the contrasting features of Zeytinburnu and Kagithane become
more obvious, as Zeytinburnu exhibits more carefully aligned parcels making the street network
becomes relatively regular. Kagithane, on the other hand, is a collage of ever-changing orientations. It
is clear that the existing urban fabric of Kagithane continues to be determined by gecekondu. From the
newer developments, Sultangazi’s major commercial axis is visible as a red vertical trace, while
residential zones are clustered as horizontal or vertical groups. The development in Bahcelievler, on
the other hand, is predominantly horizontal orienting to the highway on the south, and there is no
indication
of
clustering.
Based
on
these
observations
about
Comparative Map 3: Parcel Area. This map depicts the relative size of the land between streets.
the street network, we can deduce that the pre-existing urban fabric in Bahcelievler must have
determined its unidirectional development, whereas development in Sultangazi is to a great extent
isolated from external factors.
Parcel Area
As states in the previous sections, the neighborhood parcels of Kagithane and Zeytingburnu were
relatively smaller than Sultangazi and Bahcelievler, which gave rise to many challenges during the
transformation of the neighborhoods. Comparative Map 3 visualizes this phenomenon for the historic
gecekondu neighborhoods. Zeytinburnu and Kagithane have a wide range of parcel areas but are
dominated by relatively smaller ones (blue patches are present throughout). The parcel area constitutes
a major constraint for the transformation of these two neighborhoods because the single-family
squatter houses are replaced by larger multi-story buildings. On the other hand, Bahcesehir and
Sultangazi are almost identical to each other in their parcel size, and they are mostly uniform. The
larger parcel areas accommodate necessary infrastructure and rigorous implementation of planning
decisions.
Comparative Map 4: Building Stock Regularity.
Building Stock Regularity
In the final set of images, Comparative Map 4, I investigate building-stock features for these four
neighborhoods. The regularity index was determined by a series of factors that were computationally
integrated. I have examined the repetition of the building mass along a street and the diversity of
facade lengths in the same segment. At the same time, the fragmentation of built and unbuilt land was
considered. Implementation details of this calculation are presented in Appendix 1. It is clear that the
street and parcel constraints play a key role for the building stock, their footprints and orientation
from this infrastructure.
As one can expect, Sultangazi and Bahcelievler have a similar degree of regularity in their building
stock. However, the contrast between Sultangazi and Bahcelievler and the other two neighborhoods
is not as obvious as the differences we saw in street network and parcel morphology. The build-andsell system that has been the mainstream development model for Istanbul for the last three decades,
which has left traces in all four neighborhoods. Nevertheless, Sultangazi’s building stock has a slightly
more regular character than Bahcelievler as multi-building gated communities have been developed at
the same time in Sultangazi. The only dramatic distinction is seen in Kagithane, as the regularity indices
go way below the other neighborhoods, because the neighborhood’s existing squatter housing and
extremely fragmented built area lead to a hyperdiverse building stock.
5. Discussion
Istanbul’s existing urban fabric is a result of a multitude of social, political and economic events in the
second half of the twentieth century. Its highly fragmented development history prevents applying
established morphological models to understand its complex urban fabric. This paper presents an
approach for the investigation of Istanbul’s urban fabric by focusing on neighborhoods that are
representative of different development eras. Through the comparison of mahalle morphologies rooted
in traditional social organization in the city, I discuss a series of relative morphological features for
these neighborhoods.
Although dialogue between qualitative assessment and quantitative reasoning is necessary for a full
understanding of how urban spaces develop and function, this combination of approaches has not
been part of mapping practice in urban studies and research. Although existing studies provide
extensive qualitative description of the built environment, the amount of work focusing on
quantification of the urban form is insufficient. Accordingly, this paper makes two main contributions
to the existing body of research: First, to fill the significant gap in mapping practices, I developed
novel methodology to map morphological characteristics of urban form. This interdisciplinary
research introduces methods and tools from computer vision into urban studies. By employing imageprocessing and pattern-matching techniques, I developed analytical and visual tools to map
morphological characteristics.
Secondly, quantitative analyses of the built landscape of Istanbul contribute to existing historical and
sociological studies of the city. This study combines quantification of urban morphology with
comprehensive historical and socioeconomic investigation of selected case-study areas. Through the
mapping analyses, I present the relationship between the morphology, formation process, and socioeconomic conditions of settlements. Some issues that deserve further research are: (1) this
methodology should be applied citywide to develop more comprehensive knowledge about the city,
(2) the morphology maps in my study are based on a single parameter of the urban form. Going
forward we can superimposed different maps on each other to compare multiple characteristics.
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