Determination of office site selection criteria: Anatolian side Class A office market

The service sector, which started to evolve since the mid of the 19th century, has become a more and more important sector in the world due to the parallel growth of technology. With the globalization, companies establish closer relations and integrations in communication and business. Due to the internationalization of production as a direct result of the globalization such companies engage in a growing competition with each other. Geographic boundaries have been eliminated in this strong integrated communication environment. Cities expanded well beyond their own boundaries and became part of the labor network created by information technologies. As a consequence, the service sector, which also includes a wide range communication and information technologies, became more and more important. The flexible post-fordist production model, which emerged in the last quarter of the 20th century following the non-flexible fordist one, changed radically the production models and spaces. These radical changes in production models and spaces ensured further spread of production at international level — accelerated by technological developments — and created a positive impact on transport and communication expenses. As the core of service activities, cities and their centers were deeply affected by these changes. Urban centers developed along the main transportation arterials until the 1980s. After the 1980s urban centers started to become components of both a local and an international network by building an internal network due to the impacts of the technologic developments. The offices, core of the execution of the service activities, have been deeply affected in terms of concept and spatial structure by these sectoral macro changes. Since the first offices constructed in the 16th century to conduct the state affairs, the office concept became an individual real estate product. The offices have been developed as the most important units, especially for service activities directly related with technology. In time the operating expenditure of offices became the most substantial cost for companies. Therefore, selecting the most suitable sites for offices became increasingly important to reduce the initial investment expenses of companies. Istanbul has 30% of the employment in the service sector of Turkey and it is also home of the largest office stock of the country. The objective of this study, which was conducted in Istanbul where service activities are concentrated, is to support the potential of the sector in a planned way, not only at city level but also at country level. Moreover, to inquiring the dynamics of the development of the Anatolian Side of Istanbul in the transformation process, started in the 1980s, from a mono centric city to a poly centric city, and to understanding the behaviours of office users play an important role in the prospective site selection and planning decisions. For this purpose a survey was conducted with the Class A office users in the Anatolian Side in order to make qualitative and quantitative data analysis and to identify site selection criteria for the service sector in Istanbul. For the survey Kozyatağı, which is identified as the first degree business center of the Anatolian Side in the Environmental Plan of Istanbul prepared in 2009 at 1/100.000 scale, and the newly emerging Ümraniye were chosen as two case regions. This survey focused on measuring the size and general structure of the surveyed companies in the Anatolian Side and also investigated the criteria used by these companies to choose the location of their current offices.In addition to that, the different prioritization of the criterias in the site selection between the two districts have been investigated.