The morphological organisation of urban regeneration: Case of Bomonti

Urban regeneration projects can include different scales and scopes. Examining the concept of urban regeneration in Turkey seems to be different from the perception in Europe and America. In Turkey, the urban regeneration system generally based on the reconstruction of buildings, which just increases the urban density and on the contrary, it fails to transform the city. This situation limits the urban regeneration implementations movements on basis of parceling in Turkey. Moreover, urban regeneration projects target to increase the interventions of accessibility and livability in urban areas besides their social and economic purposes. The aims of the study are to examine how urban regeneration projects have a physical impact on their built environment and to evaluate urban regeneration process based on changing function of urban centers. Urban regeneration includes physical, social and economic improvement of the city and physical rehabilitation, beyond the mere building renovation, should include urban fabric, street fiction, livability and, therefore, the improvement of everyday life in the street. In this manner the hypotheses of the study is urban regeneration focuses on the application to increase the built area. This situation affects the density of the city, the average floor height, and of course the urban pattern negatively. Integration of the street system, human scale livability are ignored while transforming urban area. In this context, Bomonti has been selected as a case study in İstanbul to examine physical effects of urban regeneration process. In recent years, with the change of urban dynamics, Bomonti transformed to residential and CBD area from industrial. This process changed the urban pattern of Bomonti rapidly. In order to analyze the physical change in Bomonti, urban morphology approach is selected as a research method. Urban morphology defines the urban form through the processes of the city and in this context, puts spatial and social data into view. Urban morphology studies demonstrate different aspects according to different occupancies, groups and again within the aspects of these different groups, the area has been offered different variation of evidences. In this study, geographical approach (English School) and architectural approach (Italian School) are tackled to evaluate the physical change in Bomonti. In this manner block pattern analyses, density of built area, land use , the ratio of building height to the street width, the relation between building location and street and building typology analyses were performed. In addition , the analyses of integration, choice, intelligibility and synergy were performed in DepthmapX which is a software developed by UCL, to analyses street configuration. Finally, livability index was used to investigate the change of the ratio between public open spaces and built area during the urban regeneration process. Within the scope of the study, it is aimed to define the different scaled spatial regeneration in the district with in the usage of different description and approaches of urban form. For this reason, as an era before regeneration the year of 2000 and an era after regeneration the year of 2018 has been selected to evaluate the analyses and compare the situations. To analyze the urban form in 2000, 1/1000 cadastral plan, created in 2000, and 2006 satellite image were used. To analyze the urban form in 2018, 1/1000 cadastral plans, created in 2013, and 2018 satellite images were used. The data obtained from the analyzes were compared between 2000 and 2018 except building type. According to analyses the average block size has shrunk and the street configuration has become more finer-grained. The density of built area increased with the increase of high-rise luxury residential, office and hotel buildings. Housing, tourism and other functions have increased opposed to industrial and green areas, with the transformation of the area from the industrial area to housing and workplace. With the increase of the average number of floors, the sense of closure on the street scale increased. The change of building typology changed the building location-street relationship. The average front garden distance has increased. New residential, office and hotel buildings have been developed around new typologies such as tower and mixed used ground floor. Urban regeneration process has a positive effect on street pattern. It has been determined that global integration, local integration, choice, intelligibility and synergy values have increased in the process. It has been indicated that there might be a relationship between the location of new housing office and hotel projects and global integration. The livability index, which is one of the main points of the study, is decreased. In spite of the increase in the park and pavement areas, the decrease in green areas and the increase in the construction area have negatively affected the livability of the area. The potential of green and public space of the area were not evaluated well enough to increase livability of the area. The combination of different approaches has been useful in a multidimensional study of the physical effects of urban regeneration. This thesis proved that the urban transformation process affects the elements of the city in various ways. While accessibility of the streets affected positively, human scale was affected in a damaging way by the increasing of high-rise buildings. In addition, enlarging of built area increased built density and decreased livability.