Rethinking the political and professional agenda of spatial planning and design

Publisher's Versio

Publications of METU Faculty of Architecture

Publisher's Versio

Urban Compactness A Study of Ankara Urban Form

Since the last decade of the century, the ongoing search for a model of sustainable urban form has given way to an old new idea: compact cities. With the emergence of a new consciousness of urbanism, a clear argument that compactness is an essential feature of urbanity has gained validity. The vision of compact urban form, similar to those seen in early phases of human history, may seem to be just a nostalgic reaction to late-modern urbanism. Yet a close look at compact city models allows us to demonstrate the real performance of the concept in a spatial context like in terms of mobility. ?Urban Compactness? is an attempt to cover all relevant aspects of the compact city policy from early modern urbanism until today, amidst the ideological antagonism between centrism and decentrism. Relating the question of compact urban form to its historical, social, and political background, the book offers a broad framework on the issue to be discussed in the case of the master planning history of Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. This book is for all readers who are interested in urban policy and design in relation to the basic formational characteristic of cities: urban compactness

Kentsel derişiklik :

Sustainable urban development is mentioned together with the concept of urban form in contemporary planning literature. The main reason behind this is a need for determining an ideal physical development scheme and its main principles of urban future in a broad term. Besides, the operational side of urban planning requires a concrete set of design codes in order to transform urban space in both macro and mezzo scale. At this point, the concept of urban compactness and the idea of Compact City have come into the agenda of planning. In the last decade, the model of compact city has become a prototype of sustainable urban form in developed countries. It is also argued whether compact urbanity is a nostalgic metaphor or an engineering solution. It has emerged as a reaction to the negative consequences of urban sprawl and suburbanization as the anti-urbanist urban phenomena in Western geographies. Hence, the relevance of urban compactness should be examined for developing and underdeveloped countries and their settlement structures. The basic motivation of the thesis is to examine the relevance and validity of urban compactness in the case of Turkey as a developing Eurasian country. For this end, the evolution of urban compactness as a fact and an idea in the historical context of developed countries and it̕s meaning for the developing world; Ankara is examined as a case study by re-reading its planning history and the transformation of its urban form from the point of view of compactness.M.S. - Master of Scienc