Revealing the relationship between changes in public space and urban renewal and evaluating the changes in terms of urban identity: The Maltepe (İstanbul) case

In parallel with the developing world conditions, cities are also undergoing change and transformation. The most remarkable change in the development processes of cities occurs in public spaces. Likewise, public spaces are an important element for the development of urban identity and urban users by shaping the physical, social and cultural fabric of cities. On this basis, urban transformation, which is not planned holistically, leads to a weakening of the relationship of public spaces with the city. At the same time, it can also lead to urban formations that do not serve the purpose and look similar to each other. In this direction, the thesis is based on the general framework of public spaces as "Urban regeneration and urban identity are interrelated concepts. Historical, spatial, visual and socio-demographic changes that gradually develop in the city during the urban transformation process affect the urban identity". In this thesis, the approaches that stand out in macro-scale plan decisions and policies have been utilized. The relationship of the change process in public spaces with urban transformation and its impact in terms of urban identity in Maltepe district of Istanbul, which has rich identity components where artificial environment formation is observed with the highest level of human intervention at the micro scale, has been investigated. In this context, the processes related to historical, spatial, visual and social identity changes in the study area determined in the example of Maltepe District were analyzed. A survey was conducted to reveal the perceptions of different user groups in the change process. Within the scope of the findings, urban transformation strategies were developed through the potential of public space, evaluated at the neighborhood scale specific to the study area and recommendations were made.