Examination of lost spaces in the context of urban design and regaining them to the urban life, the case of Konya city

In the historical process, societies are constantly renewing and changing as well as cities in constant change and transformation. The way of life, interests and needs of societies also cause change on cities. The areas that cannot keep up with the speed of these change and transformation processes in the city or that arise randomly in these processes become lost places and find themselves pushed out of the city life. Lost places are often unnoticed and underused areas. Due to the presence of different dynamics of cities and the fact that these dynamics are unique to the local, lost spaces can appear in different types and scales in the urban area. In this context, it seems very important to re-use such neglected, dysfunctional or abandoned places within the city, to re-function these places, to bring them to the city and to integrate them into daily urban life. While lost spaces cause some problems for the city, they also contain potential opportunities to solve the problem. From this point on, the aim of this thesis study is to identify the lost places in the konya historical city center working area selected as a sampling area and to develop proposal strategies for reintegrating into the city. For this purpose, the Trancik method (1986) was used to find lost places in the detailed analysis in the field. With the help of figure-ground, connection and ground theories expansions in Roger Trancik's pioneering book 'Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design' (1986), survey interviews were conducted using both formal analyses and random sampling technique with a total of 50 people to understand the 'place'. While figure-ground and connection analyses are formal inquiries with expert perspective, analyses aimed at understanding the 'place' are mostly examinations that measure whether the cultural, historical and natural environment, urban space, urban space is perceptible, readable and traceable from a user's point of view. In the survey interviews to understand the 'place' within the scope of the study, cognitive maps were drawn to better determine the places that the participants perceived. Then, all the findings from the shape-floor, connection and ground analyses were synthesized and all the lost places within the field of study were identified. Among these lost places identified as a result of the study, the most unpopular and first place to change by users as a result of both shape-floor analysis, connection analysis and survey interviews based on 'location' was Kılıçarslan Square and its surroundings. From here, as a result of the spatial changes and interventions that the square has undergone in the historical process, the process of transforming Kılıçarslan Square and its surroundings into a lost place was briefly put forward and proposal strategies were developed to bring this space to the city.