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

Divided shopping: A syntactic approach to consumer behaviour

Erincik Edgü
Department of Architecture, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, Düzce University, Düzce, Turkey
Meray Taluğ
Department of Architecture, Faculty of Fine Arts, Design and Architecture, Cyprus International University, Haspolat, LeThoşa, Northern Cyprus
Nezire Özgece
Department of Architecture, Faculty of Fine Arts, Design and Architecture, Cyprus International University, Haspolat, LeThoşa, Northern Cyprus

Published 2015-11-01

Keywords

  • Attraction,
  • Historical urban core,
  • Pedestrian behaviour,
  • Shopping,
  • Space syntax

How to Cite

Edgü, E., Taluğ, M., & Özgece, N. (2015). Divided shopping: A syntactic approach to consumer behaviour. A|Z ITU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, 12(3), 175 - 188. Retrieved from https://www.az.itu.edu.tr/index.php/jfa/article/view/405

Abstract

Shopping is a socially interactive consumer activity that involves preference, selection and leisure. As historical city centres are still cores of traditional shopping and an asset improving social attraction, attractive routes and spaces for pedestrian movement provided by articulation in the setting are worth examining. Buildings on small sized plots located in a bounded environment usually encourage pedestrian flow, presenting more options of interest on a unit street scale; whereas spatial layout of the urban form, compactness of the circulation routes or visual scope of the users should also be examined. This paper focuses on the comparison of consumer shopping behaviour in such a historical city centre, Walled City of Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus Republic and TRNC. Regarding the lost centrality due to the UN buffer zone, divided city has gone through different physical and social development patterns in terms of land uses and functional changes. Assuming that physical accessibility reinforces social and economic attraction, the paper deals with the,- syntactic hints examined through line analysis underlying the physical development of the urban layout in three different periods of the city,- preferences of the pedestrians, emphasizing functional and spatial pattern that orient the consumer behaviour. The outcomes indicate that narrow long roads promote pedestrian flow in a movement based activity, while the curvy organic formed streets disperse pedestrian movement. Pedestrians tend to shop for retail based products in a linear layout, and tend to eat or drink in a dispersed organic layout. On the other hand, as an aspect of political curiosity both sides of the buffer zone also serve as attraction nodes regardless of the functions.