Vol. 12 No. 3 (2015): Space Syntax and Architectural Design
Articles

Disintegration of urban housing areas: Districts and new gated housing settlements

Suat Apak
Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

Published 2015-11-01

Keywords

  • Districts,
  • Gated communities,
  • Security,
  • Space syntax,
  • Graffiti and vandalism

How to Cite

Apak, S. (2015). Disintegration of urban housing areas: Districts and new gated housing settlements. A|Z ITU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, 12(3), 141 - 158. Retrieved from https://www.az.itu.edu.tr/index.php/jfa/article/view/403

Abstract

In Turkey and Istanbul, gated communities are produced rapidly and offered for use of the urban users particularly since 2000s. Urban spots created by the new gated settlement areas and the life style started appearing and spreading rapidly in outskirts of Istanbul. Starting from the emergence of these walled settlements rise, urban integrity gets disrupted and neighborhood lifestyle goes through a transition. The biggest problem posed by these islands in the city is the fact that they create non-interactive areas in the external world in contrary to the inner world. The objective of this study is to determine the interaction level between these wealth islands and existing texture and constituents of the existing texture by using the space syntax approach. First, the strength of the bonds within the current environment is determined by using the space syntax program on the current environmental plans. The methodology also followed determining the physical and social behavior patterns of the streets, mainly the paper concentrated on the intersected spaces belonging to such different life styles. These observations were made on the quality of the physical environment (or- der, graffiti, vandalism, etc.) and the utilization intensity. In the final stage, the data is collected by using the space syntax program and it was analysed to determine whether there is a correlation between the existence of graffiti and space syntax determinants. Results show that the interaction within the existing texture gets weaker at substantial levels around the walls of the island, contraversially the existence of graffiti increases, and sociologically existing users living around the walled islands turn to be “societies around / bottom the walls”.