Evaluation of urban life indicators in terms of municipalities: Example of Samsun Metropolitan Municipality

In urbanization process, cities have faced many problems such as infrastructure services being in the first place, economic, social and cultural problems. With the globalization, urban managements have improved and managing a city in terms of sustainability has gained significance. According to modern urban managements urbans are also considered to be accommodation units that provide residents with specific life standards. Furthermore, urbans have become units in development of human rights and centres where urban rights are applied.The European Urban Charter is one of the most important charte about urban rights. The Charter includes rights that citizens of European towns have due to the fact that they live in that city. Urban rights are supposed to be used by both local governments and city residents with collaboration and solidarity. Thus sustainable urban managements can be carried out and living standarts of city residents can increase.The study?s aim is to evaluate level of the quality of urban life and materialization of urban rights through urban services provided by municipalities, to reveal that during evaluation resources of data should be comparable and confidential and last of all to pioneer urban managements and planners for studies within quality of life and urban services.In this study, services provided by municipalities (environment protection, housing, social, security, transportation, sports and recreation) are determined as quality of urban life indicators and in these indicators objective data is used. Data used in this study are obtained from Turkish Statistics Institutions ADNKS database, Samsun Metropolitan Municipality 2011 Service Report, 2010 Samsun Booklet by Statistics, published by Samsun Governorship and talks with concerning units of Samsun Metropolitan Municipality and District Municipalities. Furthermore, in order to compare quality of urban life level, objective indicators and data of European Union, United Nations and such international organizations have been used.