The role of university in the process of urbanization: Case of Amasya

The term ?information society" which was appeared in 1970s is accompanied by the term ? the age of information? and today it has become an identity in which people struggle for existence in the world. Now the major capital is neither the outcomes of agriculture nor the outcomes of industrialization but it is ?information? and everybody who wants to exist can join to the process by knowing. It is surely beyond doubt that universities hold much more important and critical roles than before in these conditions.The effort to have universities in our country had a substantial identification particularly after 2006 with the campaign "a university per city". Thanks to the population who comes to the city in order to take or give the service of higher education, the city has turned into a great dynamism and to meet the multiple needs of this new population, it has been a necessity to start an urban reconstruction process. Thus, it is apparent that the qualities of this reconstruction are likely to be affective on the preferability of the city as a life and higher education place.In this research, three sample groups including university students, academic / administrative personnel and Amasya tradesmen are interviewed on the effects of Amasya University on the urban reconstruction process of Amasya. With the questionnaire prepared according to the features of each sample group, 523 people have been reached. Three different perspectives on the state of university in the city have been investigated and the data obtained by the questionnaire has been assessed in the SPSS statistic program. Many variables have been detected and the relations among the variables of the research hypothesizes have been determined by a chi-squared independence test and cross-relations have been established among the variables. According to the results collected, it has been concluded that Amasya University gives acceleration to the Amasya urbanization and this acceleration has been observed by the three groups from both sectorial and social aspects and the variables such as hometown, the duration of living in Amasya and education are influential on the perceptions of urbanization.