Determination of potential second-tier cities in Turkey and performance analysis

Roberts (2014) who stated that the 'concept of second-tier city' was popularized by Rondinelli (1982) in the 1980s, describes the second-tier cities as cities with populations ranging from several hundred thousand to several million and expressing the second level of urban hierarchy. Apart from these and similar definitions made over population size for the second-tier cities, it has been observed that different approaches have come to the fore in the definition of second-tier cities. A group of researchers who point out that the second-tier cities cannot be defined only through 'population size' and the 'functional approach' is important in defining these cities, they suggest that the second-tier cities should be define according to their roles in urban system, their functions and socio-economic relations between them and other cities. In addition to the functional approach, Cardoso (2016a) emphasized the importance of political approach wihch considers the positions of cities within the political context and historical process to the identification of second-tier cities. In addition to these definitions, it is stated that second-tier cities show different typologies according to 'their role in the local, national or global networks', 'development patterns (Roberts, 2014)' and 'their functional specializations (Song, 2013)'. One of the prominent issues in the content of second-tier cities is the factors affecting the emergence of these cities or their growth and development. As a result of the literature review, it is possible to classify these factors in three basic categories as negative externalities caused by excessive accumulation in first-tier cities, 'borrowed size (Alonso, 1973)' related to proximity to metropolitan area and lastly 'local, national or global network connectivity'. As expressed mostly 'first-tier cities' in the literature, the capitals enter the process of decreasing returns with time due to excessive growth (Parkinson et al., 2012). At this point, the decreasing returns to the size of the city associated with the decline of the first-tier cities is came to the fore an interpretation of growth of the second-tier cities (Camagni and Capello, 2015). It is said that the second-tier cities avoid the disadvantages arising from the proximity to the big metropolises, they are able to borrow role (advantages from proximity) from the metropolises in which they are located in their influenced ares and lastly they are able to reach networks in these cities (Yiğitcanlar et al., 2015) about the second important comment in the emergence of the second-tier cities which is the 'borrowed size'. The final comment in the development of the second-tier cities is related to the networks they are associated with at the local, national or global level. As stated by Capello (2000), 'network connections' (McCann and Acs, 2011) that match well with the 'urban network externalities' resulting from functional relations between cities can replace the agglomeration benefits (Derudder, as referred to in 2017). Therefore, the integration/connection to networks in different scales has emerged as a new comment in the development of second-tier cities. The last issue in the literature for the second-tier cities is the performance of these cities in terms of 'national demographic and economic growth' and 'development of social and institutional structure' compared to the first-tier cities. Parkinson et al. (2015) stated that although the second-tier cities could act less on the global scale, they are a source of dynamism for the regions outside the capital and made significant contributions to national growth. In general, even if the invidual contribution of the second-tier cities to the national growth is behind the first-tier cities, the contribution which is made together to the growth was beyond the first-tier cities. The performance of the second-tier cities is examined in the literature of developed countries through the decentralization process in the capitals and the impact of policentric development on balanced development in the nation-wide. In developing countries, the role of second-tier cities is evaluated in order to sustain national growth in the process of decreasing returns due to the excessive growth of first-tier cities rather than a performance review. When the national literature is examined in the light of the issues that come into prominence in the literature in the context of the second-tier cities, it is seen that there are limited number of studies using the second-tier city concept. Each of the studies carried out the different cities in the context of the second-tier city concept. In the studies, cities are generally considered within the scope of the change of demographic and economic structure and the analyzes on the dimensions of the social, physical and institutional structures of the cities have remained in the background. In light of the issues stated in the literature, determination of Turkey's potential second-tier cities among 81 cities depending on the performance changes in 'demographic and economic growth' and 'social, physical and institutional development' is aimed. In the realization of the aim, an inductive method is adopted which depends on the respectively forming research problem, research questions and hypotheses and testing hypothesis with two-step cluster analysis. In cluster analysis, the number of cluster is defined as '8'. Thus Turkey's 81 cities are divided into eight separate cluster for each year according to the proximity of performance to each other and related cluster centers in the above-mentioned categories. The 'Manhattan Method' which is based on the similarity and proximity measures (Yılmaz and Patır, 2011) is used in the assignment of cities to clusters. However, cluster analysis made it possible to examine the performance changes of cities by monitoring the transitions between clusters depending on the years. The cluster analysis which allowed the determination of Turkey's potential second-tier cities through performance change depends was conducted between 2007 and 2017. Potential second-tier cities in Turkey have been identified through the change of their performance in 2010, 2014 and 2017 (approximately change in every four years). Afterwards, the performance changes of the second-tier cities were examined in two different periods in the same period. The first period subject to the examination of performance change was the crisis period (2007-2009), the second is the post-crisis period (2010-2017). In addition, in the cluster analysis both for the determination of second-tier cities and for the examination of their performance changes, year of 2010 when Turkey's economy was in welfare and balance has been chosen base year. The reason for this is to avoid the misleading effects of the crisis years on the results. Thus, the performance changes of the cities were examined by going to the years after the base year and by going to the previous years. As a result, Turkey's potential second-tier cities defined as metropolitan sub-centers which are 'Bursa, Kocaeli, Sakarya, Tekirdag' growing under the influence of Istanbul and 'Manisa' growing under the influence of Izmir and 'Gaziantep and Kayseri' defined as Anatolian Tigers in the literature. It has been determined that the second-tier cities, which are different from each other for development reasons, differ from each other in terms of performance in the measurement period. In general, metropolitan sub-centers which are among the potential second-tier cities in Turkey, showed a better performance than the Anatolian Tigers in the relevant period. Additionally Turkey's potential second-tier cities also came to the fore among other cities with performance in the demographic and economic growth and they remained relatively backward in the performance shown in development of the social, physical and institutional structure. After Turkey's potential second-tier cities have been identified and potential changes in performance have been interpreted, growth and development dynamics of the cities have been investigated. Finally, in the conclusion section of the thesis, the policies for second-tier cities in the literature have been examined together with the prominent policies within the scope of this thesis. In this context, generally policies for the development of social and institutional structures of potential second-tier cities in Turkey has come to the fore. After examining the policies towards second-tier cities, the thesis was finalized with the section in which the topics that are prominent in the literature were evaluated in relation to the results obtained in the cluster analysis carried out within the scope of the thesis.