The evoluation of spatial morphology on rebel cities

The year 2011 was recorded in history as the year in which urban movements spread worldwide. The movements which were lived in some countries until 2011 resulted in the revolution in Tunisia which became an encouraging example. Following Tunisia, urban movements were then witnessed in the Arab countries such as Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Morocco and Bahrain to be referred to the "Arab Spring" which was followed by "Indignados" and "Occupy Movements" respectively in Europe and ABD. As for the urban movements in Turkey, the "Resist Gezi Park" incidents of June 2013 have common points with the movements that spread to the world. In this study, the spatial morphology of "Rebel Cities", as defined by David Harvey, was analyzed. The aim of the study is to reveal the potential relations between urban movements and spatial morphology. For this purpose, first of all the starting process, development and results of urban movements were analyzed. It is known that governments, the present-day urban perception, viewpoints regarding urban rights and commodifying cities are the major causes of these movements. The research conducted demonstrated that İnternet and social media, as communication methods of our age, played a leading role in urban movements. On the other hand, the view that "place" has an impact on the interaction of city dwellers, their coming together; thus, the emergence of urban movements is a view that is proposed within the scope of this paper. In this paper, it is argued that experiencing face-to-face communication in public space has greater value and effectiveness than coming together on the İnternet environment. When the movement which is triggered by gathering in social media became visible in urban space, it also became greater and more permanent which could be observed in the cases of Egypt, Spain, the USA, and even Turkey. The urban movements that either start in a low-income neighborhood of a city or triggered by incidents in a city center without making a call for a movement on the İnternet indicate the significance of urban spaces that make it possible to come together and interact. The hypothesis of our study is tested within the framework of the analyses and evaluations conducted on thirteen different cities. According to this scope, with the Iceland's capital city Reykjavik, Greece's capital city Athens, Tunisia's capital city Tunis, Egypt's capital city Cairo, Madrid and Barcelona from Spain, England's capital city London, New York from USA, Ireland's capital city Dublin, France's capital city Paris, Istanbul from Turkey, Germany's second big city Hamburg and Merida from Spain, as a city which did not participate in the countrywide movements have been analyzed in terms of spatial morphology. The Space Syntax method, which reveals the social logic of space, shows the common point of cities which supported urban movements as having places that people can come together in urban spaces (squares, parks, streets etc.). Because of this, spaces that were occupied during the urban movements, are selected as the centre of the analysis. Select for the analysis of Merida, the most possible place for encountering for the citizens is selectes for the analysis. Results of the method, supported that cities which be or urban movements have high intelligibility values both in local and global scales and the axes, which go to the squares, are the most integrated axes and their colours are red or orange. The results of Merida state that this city is not integrated in both local and global scales and does not carry a potential to be stated as intelligible. Therefore does not carry on potential for people to come together. These results show that "urban space" has an effect on urban movements. This study reveals the importance of urban space's potential of allowing social encounters in terms of democracy. Keywords: Urban movements, rebel cities, urban morphology, public space, Space Syntax