The role of “network of cities” in construction of global urban culture

The globalization process has led to an increased interaction between cities and to a new urban system/network in which they need to be competitive and complementary at the same time. “Network of cities”, such as World Cities, Eurocities or Sister Cities are among the well known examples of interaction and cooperation of the cities at the regional and global level. The cities of different regions and countries tend to share their experiences and their cultures within these networks in order to develop some common spatial or social strategies and further cooperation. “Best practices” or “benchmarking are the most important issues of the interaction between cities. While benchmarking facilitates the cultural dialogue between different cities, the common values developed in this process make a great contribution to the construction of global urban culture. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the role of urban networks in the interaction and integration of cities by means of “Sister City” movement that can be defined as a partnership of two cities from different countries which is based on cultural and social understanding to achieve cultural dialogue. This paper focuses on the “Sister Cities of Instanbul” to highlight the development process of the movement in the historical and geographical context and to evaluate the development phases of the relationship with sister cities. The results of our study show that Istanbul’s relationships with its sister cities are at the “associative” and “reciprocative” phases that can be defied as the earlier phases of the relationships.

Türkiye'nin kırsal yapısı: AB düzeyinde bir karşılaştırma

Civilization has started with the agricultural revolution and has proceeded with the industrialization. The beginning of settlements forms the roots of today's urban areas in which most of the world population resides. However, this trend never demolished the importance of rural areas. The term "rural area" was used originally as the home of agricultural activities to identify the areas which were not urban. However, defining rural areas as the non-urban space or the domain where agriculture and physical landscape are important is inadequate to describe today's complex reality. The discrimination of rural and urban areas becomes increasingly fuzzy. Consequently, rural areas are increasingly a part of the modern leisure industry, with mass tourism on the one hand and small-scale recreation on the other hand. In other words, further than the traditional productive function of rural areas viz. supplying agricultural, agro-food, forestry goods, goods from extractive industries and craft products, rural areas have become an environment for living and leisure activities. "Rural area" is an often used term in policy circles as well as in the scientific community and public debates; nevertheless, there is no unequivocal definition of this term, which often combines regions with many diverse features. Rural is a fuzzy concept which is contested in terms of identifying the critical parameters of rural space. Various ways of classification and definition in the literature are derived to define rurality including the level of population density, the rate of population loss or gain, settlement size, local economic structure and landscape. Actually, the meaning of rurality depends on the perception of each individual who integrates visions of rurality into everyday life. Moreover, rural has also been used in different contexts from developed countries to the underdeveloped ones. The developmental processes of social, economic and political restructuring in many countries are reshaping rural areas, and pushes governments to focus more on them. Especially in Europe the future of rural peripheries as well as the future of rural societies becomes an important development and planning issue in the EU. The globalization, liberalization, free market activities and changes of cultural values have led rural areas to become more consumerized and more externally interrelated. 80% of Europe is now rural by sheltering 25% of its population. The European Commission describes rural areas as complex economic, natural and cultural locations, which cannot be characterized by a one-dimensional criterion such as population density, agriculture or natural resources. Rural areas considered in terms of their cultural, social, political, and economic aspects -and especially in terms of their futures - have attracted much attention of governments. From this perspective, rurality of a candidate country is often the last negotiation issue taken into consideration by the EU. Turkey as the most discussed candidate is now in the accession period and during the negotiation its rurality will certainly be addressed. The complexity of Turkey's rurality is recognized by the EU and the academic world. However, its rurality is not yet evaluated as a whole. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to compare and evaluate Turkey's rurality with the EU countries on the basis of selected rural indicators. The data and information used for comparison and evaluation of 26 countries are based on Eurostat and World Bank data. A multidimensional classification technique, factor analysis, is deployed to reduce 15 indicators, while 5 main factors, viz. underdevelopment, demography, urbanization, higher education and industrialization levels are used to define Turkey's rurality in the European context. The study first offers a literature review to identify rural indicators that are often used to measure rurality of a region. In the following, the EU and Turkey's rurality are compared while giving information about the data and methodology of the study. The paper concludes by discussing the results of the study while proposing some guidelines for further study. The results of our study show that Turkey has the lower and upper values and even becomes sometimes an outlier in regard to each chosen indicators compared to the EU member states. In other words, Turkey having the highest score of rurality is rather far from EU-25. The nearest countries to Turkey are Ireland and Portugal. Therefore, rurality of EU-25 is also different between all of its member states.  Keywords: Rurality; Turkey; rural areas, European Union.Avrupa’nın kırsal çeperleri ve toplumunun geleceği Avrupa Birliği (AB) tarafından kalkınma ve planlamanın en önemli konularından biri olarak görülmektedir. Pek çok araştırmacı ve uluslararası kuruluş (ör: OECD, AB) kırsal alan dinamiklerini anlamak ve uygun politikalar geliştirmek amacıyla farklı kırsallık göstergeleri belirleyerek çeşitli kırsal alan tipolojileri geliştirmişlerdir. Bu tipolojilerde kullanılmak üzere belirlenen göstergeler, nüfus, göç, ekonomik yapı, performans, sosyal refah, eşitlik, çevre ve sürdürülebilirlik gibi pek çok farklı konuyu içeren geniş bir yelpazeye yayılmaktadır. Ancak genel yaklaşım, kırsallığı daha çok nüfus, nüfus yoğunluğu gibi demografik göstergelerle ölçme yönündedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, seçilmiş kırsal gelişme göstergeleri temelinde Türkiye’nin kırsal yapısını AB üye ülkeleri ile karşılaştırmalı olarak değerlendirmek ve Türkiye’nin AB içindeki yerini tanımlamaktır. Çalışmada 25 AB ülkesi ve Türkiye’yi içeren bir örneklem ile Eurostat ve Dünya Bankası verileri temelinde karşılaştırmalı bir değerlendirme yapılmıştır. Bu değerlendirmede çok değişkenli analiz yöntemlerinden faktör analizi kullanılarak Türkiye’nin Avrupa içindeki kırsal yapısı gelişmemişlik, demografi, kentleşme, yüksek öğrenim ve sanayileşme faktörleri temelinde değerlendirilmiştir. Sonuçlar, AB ülkelerinin kırsallık bağlamında homojen bir yapıya sahip olmadığını, Kuzey ve Güney Avrupa ülkeleri arasında önemli farklılıklar olduğunu göstermektedir. Öte yandan, çalışmanın sonuçları bu genel yapı içinde Türkiye’nin Avrupa ortalamasından oldukça uzak olmasına karşın göreli olarak Güney Avrupa ülkelerine daha yakın durduğunu göstermektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Kırsallık, Türkiye, kırsal alanlar, Avrupa Birliği

Measuring regional creative capacity: A literature review for rural-specific approaches

Recent theories on regional creative capacity often focus on urban regions without taking into account rural regions. In addition, the application of such analyses to rural regions may lead to misrepresentation or misunderstanding of rural creative capacity. Against this background, the aim of the present study is to integrate the existing literature on different components of creative capacity, namely, knowledge, innovation, entrepreneurship and networks, in order to build a more comprehensive framework for rural creative capacity and its evaluation. In the light of the perspective from the empirical literature review on the evaluation of creative capacity in rural regions, various empirical measurements seem to misrepresent or underestimate the creative capacity of rural regions. Therefore, there is a clear need to use the locality in relation to its dynamics, i.e. tacit knowledge, cultural heritage and social and physical environment as the main and basic measurement unit for creative capacity analysis. 2010 Taylor & Francis

A New Tren In Urbanızatıon: Gated Communıtıes In Istanbul

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2005Thesis (M.Sc.) -- İstanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2005Genel bir tanım olarak korumalı yerleşmeler “erişimin yasak olduğu, içerdekiler ve dışarıdakilerin var olduğu, özel kurallarla yönetilen, fiziksel özel alanlardır”. Korumalı yerleşmeler sadece konut alanları değildir, ancak bu çalışmada sadece konut alanı olan korumalı yerleşmelere yer verilecektir. Bu çalışmanın amacı konut piyasasının en önemli yönlendiricilerinden biri olan korumalı yerleşmeler olgusunu geliştiricilerinin perspektifinden gelişim süreçlerine de dayanarak incelemektir. Bu çalışma geliştirici firmalar tarafından cevaplandırılmış anketlere dayanmaktadır. Temel olarak 2 farklı anket formu bulunmaktadır. İlk anket formu geliştiricilerin korumalı yerleşmeye yaklaşımları ve davranışlarını anlamayı hedeflemektedir. İkinci anket formu ise, korumalı yerleşmelerin karakteristiklerini ve gelişim süreçlerini incelemektedir. Bu karakteristikler doğrultusunda bir fiziksel tipoloji tanımlanmıştır. 4 tip korumalı yerleşme: dikey korumalı gelişimler/korumalı kuleler, yatay korumalı gelişimler/korumalı villa kentler, yatay korumalı gelişimler/korumalı apartmanlar ve karma tip korumalı yerleşmeler/korumalı kentler İstanbul’daki tipolojiyi teşkil etmektedir. Çalışmada frekans, çapraz çizelgeler ve lojistik regresyon yöntemleri, anketleri değerlendirmek üzere kullanılmıştır. Lojistik regresyon analizi sonuçlarına göre geliştirici firma isimleri gerek yatırım yapmak gerekse başarılı bir korumalı yerleşme projesi geliştirmek için ana ölçüt olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. Diğer bir deyişle, korumalı yerleşmeler bütün pazarı geliştirici firmalarının isimleri sayesinde ele geçirme potansiyeline sahiptirler. Çalışmanın sonucu göstermektedir ki; korumalı yerleşmeler kentsel çevreyi radikal olarak dönüştürmekte ve yerel otoritelerin bu gelişimler için hiçbir özel stratejileri bulunmamaktadır.As a general definition gated communities are “physical private areas with prohibited access and directed with special rules where outsiders and insiders exist”. Gated communities are not only residential areas however this study will focus on residential gated communities. The aim of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of “gated communities” which is one of the most important driving forces in housing market from the perspective of developers while addressing the development process of gated communities. This study is based on data which stem from questionnaires filled out by developer firms. There are basically two different questionnaires. The first questionnaire aims to understand the developers’ approaches and behaviours to gated communities. The second questionnaire addresses the main characteristics and development process of gated communities. On the basis of these characteristics of gated communities a physical typology is defined. 4 types of gated communities viz. vertical gated developments/gated towers, horizontal gated developments/gated villa towns, horizontal gated developments/gated apartment blocks, and mixed type gated developments/gated towns, constitute the typology in Istanbul. The methodologies; frequency, cross-tabulation and logistic regression is deployed to evaluate the questionnaires. According to logistic regression analysis developers’ name is the main criteria to invest and develop a successful gated project. In other words, gated communities have the potential capture the whole market by the name of their developers. The results of the study show that gated communities are radically transformed urban environment; however, local authorities have no special strategies for this development.Yüksek LisansM.Sc