An evaluation of campus planning in settlement patterns with regard to the criteria of accesibility

IV ABSTRACT a Higher Eucation Councils are the most efficient institutions for the rapid progress of nations on international platforms. They are the leading institutions on development of the countries on science and technology. Turkish Higher Education Council, which give service on different parts of the country since the establishment of Turkish Government is supported by the new changes on the laws after 1992. Following that year there has been a definite increase on the numbers of established universities and by 1998 their numbers have increased up to 72. Due to this rapid increase there has been inflation on university planning process. Consequently during this re-construction period of Turkish Higher Education System some problems are met by the user groups of the newly built university campuses. The most comeaccrossed problem on campus planning in the recent years seems that the universities do not perform a definite unity in their campus settlements. Instead of collecting all the academic programs of a certain university under a major campus site, most of the universities have distributed their academic programs into minor campuses that are separated from each other. Besides that, when the major groups of functions such as resting-feeding- socializing and learning are not designed under a major campus site and they are separated from each other, then the basis of the 24-hour university concept cannot be obtained. Because of this situation the present trend on establishing scattered campuses for a proposed university should be investigated from the beginning and alternative university models should be developed for these problematic universities. On the contrary, among the existing Turkish Universities that are established under a major campus site most of them, either related to their selected campuspattern or to the largeness of the selected campus site, are not used effectively as it is desired by the students. Generally these university campuses' development schemes are planned above the average walking distances of pedestrians. So, in most of their land-use plans the accessibility distances between the major groups of functions and between the relative academic spaces usually exceed the defined average walking standards for pedestrians. As a result students have difficulties on the perception and orientation of the campus spaces. They cannot share information with others easily, social unification does not occur and students lack of their social identities on belonging to a certain community. On behalf of these discussions made, it is required to analyze the design process of campus settlements in relation with the requirements of the campus users. It is tried to analyze the alternative models of various land-use plans on the basis of the accessibility criteria in order to create livable campus environments.