Gated communities are a forerunner in the new form of urbanization emerging in Istanbul. Among the main factors affecting this urbanization process are the new elites, new lifestyles and the demand for physically-secured housing settlements. Triggered by these factors, gated communities have become the impulsive force of social and spatial segregation. This segregation and its dimensions, which compose the research question of this paper, are analyzed and discussed herein with the help of spatial mapping and interviews. First, the locations of the existing private housing projects in Istanbul are mapped and the location criteria for these projects are determined. Second, some factors affecting the segregation, i.e. the residents’ reasons for preferring to live in a gated community, their usage habits of the facilities within the community and their daily commute to the city, are evaluated via interviews. Finally, the main findings are discussed.

Especially during the last decade, in parallel with the technological and scientific developments in the world, empirical researches have been conducted on the livability in urban spaces, people’s quality of life and the development of the urban space quality, together with a general questioning of the concept of urbanization. The results of these researches are presented as research reports. Urban space is the main tool integrating a city. Urban spaces are shared by the city-dwellers and various users, and serve as the environment in which they convey and relearn cultural accumulation. Moreover, in the context of defining the urban environment (the formation of the image regarding that city), city-dwellers acquire the experience of being a city-dweller as a consequence of their cultural identities, individual development and interaction with each other in these spaces. In cities or urban places, the practical and theoretical problems experienced with respect to public spaces are mostly methodological since it is not exactly known what is meant or understood by “public spaces”. The problem of understanding this complication can be solved not by evaluating the social, political, functional, and aesthetic issues randomly, but by the experts’ clear presentation of the solutions related to their research. In this study, in parallel with the developments in the world, the parameters of space quality to be used were determined for the urban spaces (squares and streets) in our country to be redesigned and renewed in the context of the quality of space.

In contemporary societies, through the advances in the technologies of informatics and communication, global interactions are increased, and developments, variations, changes, and transformations in any field are shared more rapidly than at any previous time in human history. Existing systems have been unable to show the necessary flexibility regarding the new requirements and the problems of new relations due to unpredictable circumstances. This can lead to the perception of chaotic societies and cause ontological problems in planning, which is based on future predictions. The main goal of this paper is to summarize the “synergetic society model”, “synergic administration” and “synergistic planning approaches” (developed for the dissertation). These concepts will help us to understand uncertain and unpredictable social changes. According to our model, “social synergy”, which is spontaneously emerging and organizing via communication channels, is thoroughly examined in the processes of chaos and self-organization as experienced following the eastern Marmara earthquake in 1999. The building process of a primary school with the help of social synergy in Kılıçköy / Yalova after the earthquake is explained on the basis of communication channels between different levels and with varying dynamics.

Along the rear of the Unkapanı Dry Goods Market and extending to the Bozdoğan Arches lies a residential and commercial area where shanty settlements form the ruined historical fabric. The area is too remote from the Süleymaniye Mosque to benefit from the steady tourism. Today, the promising social and architectural configuration of the area seems to be forever lost. Abject poverty in the region, whose residents are either unemployed or can barely support themselves, bears witness to the rapid downfall of the region’s historical texture. Renovation endeavors undertaken by the local government focus on changing the current social structure and revitalizing the history of the area. A group of architectural students have run pilot studies to address the questions of whether it is possible to help the current social structure adapt to the modern age and which criteria and concepts need to be considered when rebuilding the historical structure. Carrying the concepts of equality and universality to a common ground, feeling the “spirit of presence”, superpositioning different and specific identities, and creating discussion platforms of refined sensitivity comprise the core of this article.

The main component of accessibility in urban areas is the relation between the transportation network and land use. Improvements in technology have an effective role on the location of urban functions on behalf of urban transportation networks in addition to the economic and social life in the cities. In some cases, technological improvements in the transit systems demonstrate positive and beneficial solutions for the citizens. However, the increasing use of individual automobiles in the cities constitutes one of the most consequential difficulties. The number of automobile owners is stated to be an indicator of the advanced level of cities; however, when the rail or sea transit systems are insufficiently developed and/or when integration between the transit systems is lacking, the use of individual automobiles in daily urban travels escalates dramatically. Such a situation results in serious accessibility problems especially in the historical core of the cities, which are often not planned or developed for vehicular traffic. Under these circumstances, besides the intensive use of social and cultural activities, the speculative aims hasten the deterioration process of the historical districts and cause secondary effects in the form of noise, visual and aesthetic pollution. The Historic Peninsula in Istanbul Metropolitan Area is experiencing the above-mentioned challenges. This article puts forward the importance of the transportation network and its effects on the location of urban facility areas such as administration, education and health, which comprise the whole metropolitan area or national scale of facilities throughout the history in the Historic Peninsula. Finally, based on the hypothesis, the statistical evaluation methods of data collection and interval surveys, which were applied at sample urban facilities during the case study, were analyzed. Furthermore, the criteria for the interaction of transportation and location of urban facilities highlighted by the study are discussed. One of the striking implications is the existence of urban facility areas situated in the Historic Peninsula, which attract both metropolitan and national scale trips during the day. Today, in transportation and urban land use planning, the facilities are drawing high volumes of vehicular and pedestrian traffic out of the historic parts; however, in contrast, the Historic Peninsula is complicated and fully motorized. Furthermore, the limited building lot sizes, which cannot respond to the growing population, raises the issue of decentralization of urban facilities that also use service vehicular transportation today. These circumstances may cause Istanbul to lose the prestige of her historic center and increases the risk of the relocation of central urban facilities according to only highway access. In an effort to avert this situation, a “traffic-limited city” model is suggested for Istanbul in the final proposal section.

At the end of the economic reconstruction process experienced since the 1980s, social scientists have discovered new industry areas, concepts such as flexible production and spatial division of labor, and they began focusing increasingly on services. During this era, many professions in the production and service sector were eliminated as a result of automation. There has been a growing tendency towards the spatial separation of routine and non-routine office activities in advanced economies. Routine activities that are defined as back office activities, mainly involving data processing (e.g. payroll, accounting, subscriptions, billing, credit card services, claims processing and word processing), so-called “call centers”, are moved to less developed regions with cheap and skilled labor. Call centers are offices established by organizations to deliver services remotely by telephone, replacing the need for face-to-face interaction with customers. This paper considers the implications of call center work on economic development in regions in Turkey facing relative economic disadvantage.

The matter of “rural development” has been an important issue for approximately 20 years. International organizations like the United Nations, the World Bank and the European Union, as well as many developed and developing countries are devoting increasing time and resources to the rural development issue. Studies in economics, politics and geography, on the other hand, lay out the theoretical framework in this matter. Rural poverty, migration to urban areas, pollution of water and agricultural land, problems of agricultural production, and introducing global solutions to these problems have become primary issues on the agendas of many countries. The aim of the paper is to discuss the rural development policies with built-in global solutions in a new perspective, in the context of local social structure and relations. Accordingly, the paper addresses the change in the rural development paradigm and the role of social capital in rural development.