Kent Ve Kent Mekanlarının Değerlendirilmesi

Abstract

Bu çalışmada kentler ve kent mekanlarının değerlendirilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Birinci bölüm konuya giriş niteliğindedir ve konunun neden seçildiği ifade edilmektedir. ikinci bölümde kentlerin farklı tanımlan ortaya konmuş ve gerçekte kentlerin tüm bu tanımları kapsadığı ancak tek tek hiçbiri olmadığı belirtildikten sonra tarihte kentleri tasarlamaya yönelik teorilere değinilmiştir. Kentlerin çok farklı yaklaşımlarla ele alınabileceği açıklanmış ve genel bir teorinin ancak melez (hybrid) olabileceği ortaya konmuştur. Bölümün devamında kent dokusu tanımlanmış ve kent dokusunu etkileyen veriler tek tek ele alınmıştır. Üçüncü bölümde kent mekanlarının tanımı, mekanın tanımından geliştirilerek yapılmış, özellikleri ve yer niteliği kazanmaları mcelenmiştir. Bu mekanların insan yaşantısındaki önemi ve yeri vurgulandıktan sonra çeşitli kent mekanlarının aynmı yapılmış ve kamusal mekanlar ayrıca açılarak incelenmiştir. Kamusal mekanlardan sokaklar ve meydanlar gelişimleri ve özellikleri ile ele ahmp farklı kültürlerde değişik anlamlar taşıdıklarına belirtilmiştir. Bölümün sonunda da Türk kentleri ve kent mekanları ayrıca inceleme konusu olmuştur. Dördüncü bölümde kent ve kent mekanlarının oluşum ve gelişimi açısından İstanbul Tarihi yanmada örnek bölge seçilmiş ve ikinci ve üçüncü bölümdeki açıklamaların yardımı ile değerlendirilmiştir.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate cities and open spaces related to the factors that effect them. Importance of the open spaces is also studied to analyze the subject. If the various definitions of the city are examined one can see many differences among them. Generally, two types of city definitions are more evident: concrete city definition and abstract city definition. Abram's definition of the city can be given as an example of concrete city definition. According to him, a city is any large or important human settlement. KostoPs definition of the city on the other hand is an example of an abstract city definition. According to him, cities are amalgams of buildings and people. They are inhabitant settings from which dairy ritual drives their validity. In our opinion, the city is both of them and it is not possible to separate the concrete and abstract part of it. There are many approaches to the urban design theories. These theories differ significantly from each other but taking them together can provide us with an integrated urban design. One can give Trancik's work as an example for urban design theories. He puts forward three different theories:. Figure-ground theory; to analyze the two dimensional conception of space.. Linkage theory; to emphasize the connections and movements in the space.. Place theory; to emphasize the importance of historic, cultural and social values. He adds that each of these approaches have its own values but the optimum is one that draws on all three. After analyzing city theories, one can conclude that any theory to examine the city must be a hybrid one. After working on city theories, the pattern of the city is examined. There are two different city patterns; ville cree and ville spontane. These definitions also include different typologies. The differences among them are derived from many factors. Mainly three different environments come together to form a city:. Physical environment. Social environment. Cultural environment IX The physical environment includes topographic, geographic and climatic data. Those data are very important in choosing a place to build a city. In fact those were the most important factors to build a city in antiquity. Halikarnassos, Troy are some of the examples that can be given. The physical environment becomes important because of its facility to transportation, its sources and also sometimes for its facilities to protect the city. The shape of a city is formed according to the physical environmental data. The form, the materials and the shape of building are reflection of the physical environment. But sometimes physical environment's data are not enough to explain the city form. Kostof gives the example of Mezopotamian cities that have an organic pattern even though they are build up on flat territories. He explains this controversy' by cultural environmental data and says that the Mesopotamian people came ther from mountains to this area. The human data is reflected to the city shape in two ways:. Social Environment. Cultural Environment The social environmental data reflects to the cities in two ways: socio-political and socio-economic. Those factors are very important in the development of the cities. The future of a city can be change by political decisions. Istanbul is a good example for this: for the sake of being elected, politicians freely allow even to challenge immigrants to enter the city therefore today Istanbul became a vast, unplanned city. If one does not know what people eat, what they believe in, what they love and how they came together; it is impossible to start to plan a city. That is why the cultural environment's data is the most important one among others. It is not possible to understand the cultural environment without having a clear explanatiin of whay culture is. The same word has many meanings. Mainly culture means what we learn from the past and today, it forms our life style that also reflects to the cities. However culture is changeable and dynamic, this changes the shape of the cities. The city structure is mainly constituted by urban spaces. To define urban spaces, first one should define what space is. Aristotle defines space as a container of a thing -a sort of succession of all- inclusive envelopes, from what is within the limits of the sky, to the very smallest, rather like Russian dolls. From this point of view Meiss says that the space is a hallow limited externaly and filled up internally. Architectural theorists dealing with space have developed various space concepts. Schulz distinguishes between five space concepts, the pragmatic space of physical action, the perceptual space of immediate orientation, the existential space which forms man's stable image of his environment, the cognitive space of the physical world and the abstract space of pure logical relation. According to those definitions, Ashihara defines urban spaces by "architecture without a roof.", and adds that urban spaces must be deliminated by only two planes -a floor and a wall- it is a space created through the use of only two dimensions. But it has three dimension, the sky being the ceiling. All the areas that have three dimensional qualities may become '?space" but to become "a place" an area needs different meanings. Even though one may categorize spaces, place is unique. A space becomes a place with the values that are given by people and time. Schulz defines these values by the term "genius loci" that means "spirit of place." The most important element that gives the place its spirit are the people. There are many activities in daily life that get intensive according to the quality of space where they occur. These activities integrate the social structure of a city. That is the reason why open spaces become important. Trancik groups open spaces in two categories: soft spaces, the natural environment that is the gardens, cemeteries, parks in the cities and hard spaces that are the streets and squares. On the other hand they aiso can be grouped such as private, semi-private and public space that differs from one culture to another. The most important characteristics of urban open space are identity and orientation. To be at peace with the universe, with the society and with themselves people need to be able to situate themselves by affirming their identity, on the other hand man needs to orientate himself for his mobility. Streets are the most important elements that connect the city. They are not only useful for transportation but they also serve as "places" where people get together. Their most important characteristics is continuity. They help people to orientate, to move from one place to another. In history, there used to be different types of streets. Twentieth century's modernist architecture theorists have tried to eliminate streets from cities. Le Corbusier's opinion about streets was that "those places are not to be streets necessarily and we can find different things instead of them.". But in spite of these ideas during the 60' s and 70' s a new concept of streets had been developed. The translation of the word "square" in Turkish is "meydan" that means vast, large, open area. Usually open places differ from culture to culture and as a result they all have different meanings and have different names such as square, piazza, court, place, circus The most important and common characteristics of places is enclosure that provides the place to be defined. Streets' intersection forms nodes most of the time, but they do not always form a place. The Turkish cities are influenced by different factors, the most important ones being nomadism and Islamic culture. For years Turks lived a nomadic Hfe and today this life style still influences Turkish cities. The immigrants who come from the rural area create a semi nomadic environment with their own animals, gardens and carriages around the city. As time goes by, they become a part of the city. XI While all urban settings have an organization, the principle of this organization differs so that while US cities maximize movement and accessibility, traditional Muslim cities limits movement and controls behavior by controlling mobility. Considering Islam not as a religion but as a culture and life style one may understand its internal structure. The Islamic character has reflection on the Turkish cities diffusing in its internal structure. There is not many open spaces in Turkish towns. Instead of this it has a homogemous structure in which the street lies inside an organic pattern with private gardens. The last part of the thesis is an analyze of the city pattern of the historical peninsula of Istanbul. The place where the city was founded is related with the physical environmental characteristics. The geographic situation of the peninsula was very suitable for commerce by sea transportation and also for defense. The first settlement on the historic peninsula dates to the prehistoric times, but it gained its importance when it was chosen as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. This was followed by the restoration of the city with many new monuments according to a new urban plan. Even though physical environmental characteristics were very important at the beginning, social and cultural environment's characteristics overcame it, and became more important. The first socio-political decision that reflects to the city was the creation of a city that would compete with Rome. The peninsula has seven hills on which main roads cross. On top of these hills Byzantines built fiat places on which they constructed many forums. These forums served as places where Ottoman Mosques were built after the conquest. The topography of the peninsula and the monuments on the top of the hills gave the city its special silhouette. After the conquest, the city was influenced by a different culture. Islamic culture changed the city pattern a lot. All the forums were replaced by Ottoman mosques with large courts that are used to gather people together. - In the city, there were many different ethnic groups and the municipality was missing. These factors with the Islamic life style formed a complicated organic urban pattern. In 19 a century as a result of commercial and military relations, the Ottoman government was influenced by the western culture and this started to westernize the city. But these efforts were successful up to a certain point because this was not the public's decision and people did not accept new urban design principles and patterns. The most important result of this decision were that city had finally its municipality and scaled maps. The city lost its function as a capital which continued for centuries when theTurkish Republic was founded in 1923, but this did not change its character of being the biggest and most important city of the country. Xll In 1934, H. Prost was appointed by Atatürk, he made a new development plan for Istanbul and took the decision to protect the historical silhouette. Later in 1956 the prime minister Menderes started a new development plan to modernize the city. According to this plan new large streets were opened and this destroyed a lot of monuments and also changed the city historical pattern. Today there are not many changes in the organic pattern of the city. On the other hand, the silhouette has changed over the years because of the wrong decision of urban planning. At present immigration is the most important problem of the city. The cultural shape of the city has changed a lot. And still a good and comprehensive city plan not produced. Alongside the genaral study of the historical peninsula of Istanbul; Sultanahmet, Beyazıt and Eminönü were studied in detail according to the theories studied in previous chapters. In conclusion, one can say that these areas are planned in a two dimensional way and can not reach the third and fourth dimension. That is the reason why historical continuity is missing in these three areas, causing a problem of identification.