Syntactical analysis of spatial behaviour in the urban voids formed by the ruins of historical city walls

Urban spaces are such places where citizens come together and interact socially, and different socio-cultural groups of society encounter with each other. In the formation of urban spaces, there is a mutual interaction between the perceptions, interpretations and behaviours of the citizens within the physical environment. While these interactions in daily life take place, cities with dense historical, spatial and perceptual layers, where the traces of the past are transferred to the present time, leave deep traces in the memory of the citizens by influencing their perceptions and behaviours. The structures and cultural values of different historical times that exist in the memory of the city contribute to the best understanding of the characteristics of urban space. One of the components in which this process in the cities can be read is the cultural heritage and ruins of various civilizations revealed by the historical past. As a matter of fact, the structures that carry the morphological structures and traces of different periods and civilizations and the ruins left behind continue to provide important data on the memory of the urban space and contribute to the belonging of the citizens to the city they live in. For this reason, environmental and urban perception, which can be defined as the memory of a city, is of great importance for the citizens to make sense of the city they live in, the cultural values and social patterns that make up the city. This thesis study aims to examine the effects of the structures and remains of the Galata walls on the perception and behaviour of the citizens, which have witnessed various empires since the Byzantine Empire period and are still physical parts of the urban space. It is based on the hypothesis that in the urban areas where today's ruins are located, the parking lot, warehouse area, various functions, being under the subway excavation, as well as the unplanned construction in the immediate vicinity of these structure and the ruins, cannot be experienced visually and physically enough by the citizens due to the reasons that affect their visual perceptions. It is thought that the space syntax data of integration and visibility (isovist) belonging to the current morphological structure of the region also affects the perceptions and behaviours of the citizens. This study, in which this interaction is discussed together with syntactic analyses and behavioural analyses of individuals using the urban area, is based on the determination of the reasons that prevent the transfer of urban memory to new generations. As a matter of fact, it is thought that these reasons, which directly affect the behaviour in the perceptual processes of individuals, have a negative impact on the cognitive perception of the society over time and create an urban void while posing a threat to the transfer of urban memory to the future. In this study, the theoretical background of the research consists of examining the concept of urban void in the context of urban spaces identified in the Galata region, which has transferred the physical and social layers of various civilizations throughout the historical process to the present day. The methodology of the study is based on the comparison of the behavioural patterns of the urban spaces that formed around the remnants of the city walls in the Galata region and the syntactic characteristics of the urban space. In this context, it is aimed to investigate the behavioural patterns of 10 urban areas around the ruins of the city walls in the Galata region, to investigate the impact of the morphological structure of these urban areas on behaviour and to reveal the reasons behind the behavioural patterns of the citizens. For the field research, historical buildings, ruins, and their nearby urban environments in which these structural components are located in the Galata region, which is one of the regions where the historical stratification affecting the physical structure of Istanbul is intense, is studied. To determine the environmental perception in 10 different areas, behavioural data were used, and descriptive and statistical analyses were carried out in comparison with the space syntax data that constitute the existing morphological data of the region. In this direction, behavioural analyses were prepared for each of the 10 selected regions by using the information about the behavioural data of the individuals using the region through observation in the urban areas selected as the study area. This first dataset of the research created the behavioural data of each region. The second dataset of the study consisted of the syntactic data obtained by the space syntax method for each region. The two datasets obtained were analyzed comparatively.