Sustainability of urban identity of riverfront settlements

In the historical process, water has been one of the effective reasons for the establishment of cities due to the advantages it provides, and important civilizations have been established by the sea, lake or river. Civilizations that developed in the five main regions of the world were established in the plains of the Nile River, Amazon River, Mississippi River, Yellow River, Indus River, Euphrates, and Tigris rivers. Water is an important factor in the emergence of local identity in cities settled on the banks of rivers, one of the components of natural identity. However, the rapidly developing cities with industrialization moved away from the riverfront and the riverside lost its importance. Many studies indicate that one of the most important problems of today's cities is the spatial similarity that occurs with the loss of the identity of cities. In this thesis, it is aimed to contribute to the scientific literature with the aim of examining the reasons for the loss of the identity of today's cities through river coastal settlements and integrating the relationship between rivers and cities, which are disconnected from each other. With the aim of integrating cities and historical centers with the river and planning accessible places on the coast, it is the aim of the study to conduct a research around the concepts of identity, protection, and sustainability and to make suggestions to the problems identified in line with the analysis. In this study, urban identity and riverfront settlements has been searched an analysis of national and international literature on the sustainability of the model riverfront settlement of urban identity in Turkey are determined. In this context, the process of development of the city founded in the riverfront settlements in Turkey aimed to determine the factors that lead to segregation or integration with rivers. Within the scope of the study, a classification was made according to the settlement types and locations of the cities with rivers, and the cities were categorized based on the preservation of the riverfront settlements identity of the historical city centers. The universe of the study consists of 18 cities, which are tangentially located near the riverfront, and the cities with river passing through, four categories are cities where the historical city center is preserved, lost and new settlements are located on the riverside. As a result of the classification, the two cities with the highest population among the three categories related to the historical city center river were selected as the sampling areas. In this context, Diyarbakır and Edirne in Category I, Antakya and Amasya in Category II, Adana and Tokat in Category III were determined as the sample cities of the study and the change of the identities of the selected city centers was examined in architecture, urban design, and urban scale. To determine the environmental and social identity components of the cities, identity catalog specific to the cities, which include the historical structures of different civilizations that reflect their geographical location, topography, climate, vegetation, geological structure, demographic structure, historical development, and cultural identities, were created. The important turning points in the planning and development decisions of the cities were investigated, and the factors affecting the development direction of the city and the role of the river in the planning and development of the city were examined. Identity change in architectural scale has been tried to be determined by comparatively examining the micro-scale examples of historical building and civil architecture with today's settlements. The historical fabric of the 19th and 21st centuries was analyzed to determine the transformation process of the riverfront with the relationship between the protected area of cities in architecture, urban design, and urban scale. In this study, in which the Space Syntax Method, one of the quantitative analysis methods, was used, the parameters such as integration, connectivity, intelligibility and synergy value for the integration of cities and historical core with rivers were examined through quantitative data. As a result, through the comparative analysis study made on the spatial development of the sample cities as well as quantitative data, the problems of integration with the river of cities with different identity components, the effects of the decisions taken, and the implementations were determined. It was determined that the geographical location, topographic structure, and demographic structure as well as the location of terminal, airport, industrial and agricultural areas were effective in planning decisions in the development of cities. In the sustainability of the identity of the cities; geographical location, topographical structure, geological structure, vandalism, wars, natural disasters, zoning, planning, and conservation decisions are effective. In the study, it was determined that while the coastal areas to integrate with the river in two cities were used for recreational purposes, there was no study in four cities to integrate the river with the city. As a result, suggestions were made for the architecture, planning and conservation disciplines in integrating cities with rivers.