Effect of private sector in public space development process; POPS implementation and potentials: An assessment for Sisli, Buyukdere Avenue

Public spaces are important urban areas that people get together and interact with each other, and through those individual or social activities create social consciousness, form collective memories and reveal urban identities. With that point of view public spaces, being the enabler of all, are fundamental to cities. When studied throughout the historical time span public spaces are in a constant change, just like the city itself. However the change that is brought by the industrial revolution –that is, industrial revolution triggered economic and public changes, that also affected public spaces, is unique in its sense that it causes many conceptual discussions. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, urbanization has gained an acceleration never encountered in the history before. When evaluated from the spatial perspective, residential and commercial functions that were located in the city centers in the past, has been separated with cities starting to have multiple city centers. City centers where the production function is located, has become places that are dominated by vehicle traffic, not sanitary, active only at working hours, and isolated and unsafe at other times. This has also gave the ground for public spaces to lose their functionalities that preserved its existence and importance since the emergence of cities. Aside from the physical changes in public spaces, social structure has gone through changes in this time period. First, public life has moved to private areas, which is then followed by shopping malls that started to arise in satellite cities, to emerge as the new spaces that public life is being built, that was abandoned in city centers. Eventually, with abandoned public spaces and public life that has moved behind closed spaces, perspective on public space has changed in many disciplines. With the contemporary approach that arised from re-defining public space, "being societal" and "publicness value" gained importance. At this point it is seen that the connection of public spaces with territorial parameters has started to weaken. As a result of the economic and public changes created by the Industrial Revolution, the amount of public spaces, and their spatial qualities has decreased, especially in urban development areas. This thesis study is particularly interested in enhancing the amount and the quality of public spaces, which are the most important reflection of public life. Still in this day and time, public space production constitute a problem due to increasing land costs and maintenance fees. As a solution to problems encountered in public space production, implementations that are based on cooperation of entities or persons, other than the state, has emerged in 1960s and the amount of these applications is increasing every day, in every part of the world. The main focus of the study is to review alternative methods that can be implemented in order to improve the amount and the quality of public spaces according to usage demand from individuals that consist the society. Within that scope, an alternative method being implemented is POPS, that stand for Privately Owned Public Spaces, which implies public spaces being owned by an entity that is other than the state. In this method, private entities establish public spaces and provides for its management and maintenance, in exchange for construction privileges from the government. It is a zoning application that has emerged with the principle of public space production, despite limited public resources, in cooperation with private sector, especially in city centers where land costs are high. The purpose of this study is to research, analyse and report the history and the present of, criticism against and the solutions suggested for POPS implementation, which is becoming widespread abroad, yet is still considered problematic in Turkey, and evaluate for the potential it holds to improve the amount and the quality of public spaces. This thesis study is interested especially in Büyükdere Avenue and its vicinity, as it's among the most important urban development axes. The study reveals the potential that can be created by the cooperation with private sector with POPS and similar practices. In order to understand public space and related concepts, it is necessary to understand the changes they have gone through down the ages. First of all, literature is reviewed thoroughly in order to present a theoretical frame for the study. Subsequent to determining the research area, the area is observed in detail personally. In order to theoretical frame presented and the current conditions at the research area to coincide, it is realized that additional studies are required. Two surveys were carried out in the research area. Both surveys were created by the online survey tool tr.surveymonkey.com and the links created special to each survey were distributed via e-mails and WhatsApp application. Survey studies were available during April 10-20, and the participants were allowed to fill in the surveys at any time within those days. The first survey aims to examine and enhance the theory presented with literature review, where no restriction was held on the survey participants. The second survey was prepared in order to evaluate the user perception of selected potential public space, therefore the participants were selected to be mostly among people either living or working at Büyükdere Avenue axis or its vicinity. In that perspective, %70 of the survey participants were aimed to be from that specified crew, and the rest to be from people living or working at other districts of Istanbul, in order to test the accuracy of the results. Within the methodology stated, the aim is to understand the evolution of the relation between public space and property, and to realize the effects of property on values as being societal, and publicness, which are important factors of public space, in our day. This thesis study consists of five main sections. In the introduction section, which is the first part of the study, the purpose of the study, the scope, and the methodologies used throughout the study is explained in detail. In the second part of the study, which embodies literature review, incomprehensibility between public space and public sphere concepts is eliminated and the concepts are explained in the way used within the scope of this study. Following that, literature review on the historical development of public spaces is presented and contextual alteration of public space is stated within the scope of this study. Literature review ends with explanations on other terms and concepts related to public space. In the third part of the study, POPS (Privately Owned Public Spaces) implementation is reviewed, supporting the purpose of the thesis study. Guides that are used in the world for the implementation are compiled in this section. The fourth part of the study is where the field research is presented. Within the scope of the thesis, field research is done in two stages. Firstly Büyükdere Avenue that has been selected as the research area, is analysed in order to realize publicness potential according to methods presented in literature review. In the second part of the field research the area in front of Cevahir Shopping Mall, that is shown to hold potential for being a public space, is analysed from user, activities and user perception perspectives with literature review, observation and survey study. In the last part, which is the conclusion section, insights gathered from the analyses are evaluated thoroughly, and strategies and suggestions that should be followed are presented, in order to create public spaces that can answer the social needs.