Healthcare facilities are being evaluated throughout the world determine to what extent they are meeting the needs of patients. Evidence-based research is gaining importance in Turkey as hospital designers strive to increase patients’ satisfaction. In this paper, we will examine the results of a case study conducted to evaluate the spatial quality of patients’ rooms in the context of their satisfaction. Two private general healthcare buildings in Gaziantep were examined in the case study. We chose to evaluate private hospitals because we assumed they would have better conditions than state hospitals. We also took into consideration that these healthcare institutions are in the process of accreditation. Surgeries are frequently conducted here and long-term stays are common. In order to evaluate the subject thoroughly, we used a both a questionnaire and a checklist to gather information. Problems with the spatial quality of the rooms will be identified in the discussion chapter. The examples chosen for the study have showed significant development in available services and space. Using the data obtained from the case study, we have chosen three categories of design criteria through which to evaluate these facilities. Findings will be presented under the headings of function, aesthetics and safety in the results chapter.

Urban environment, natural environment and energy requirements are growing in the face of increasing population, urbanization rates and consumption factors. At the same time, new technologies also bring innovation to urban life and process of urban design. Based on this, since the 1990s, new planning approaches and initiatives (greencity, ecocity, liveable city, digital city, smart city initiatives etc.) have been improved to minimise the negative effects of cities on nature and humans, to reduce the pressure of population and urbanization and create effective and liveable cities. The term “Smart City” is a new, ever-developing concept. Although there is not a clear definition yet, it exists within different scenarios of urban development. The concept of “Smart Settlement” reflects the idea of urban reconstruction that makes cities better for humans and nature. The purpose of this study is to explain the smart settlement in a comprehensive manner and reveal the principles of smart settlement within the framework of the current planning approach and various initiatives.

Shopping malls demonstrate the growth of consumption culture in contemporary urban life. After the 1980s, a liberalized economy and changing global factors made shopping malls important components of Turkish urban identity. As shopping malls have become such a significant part of the social world of youth in the last twenty years, it seems crucial to concentrate on ‘malls and youth’ as a subject of study. In this context, this study aims to analyze the leisure time activities and preferred leisure spaces of teenagers in Turkey as well as where shopping malls fit in among other leisure spaces. In addition to this, the study will focus on the question of how youth perceive and experience the social and physical environment of shopping malls and their relationship with the concept of design. To this end, a field survey was conducted in the Ankara Migros Shopping Mall. The research was carried out through observations and in-depth interviews with 104 teenagers ranged in age from 13 to 19. The results of the study indicate that shopping malls were the preferred leisure space for teenagers. Physical characteristics such as the location of the mall and ease of accessibility were determined as the primary reasons for the teenagers’ preference. According to analyses, it was found that the youth did not pay much attention to the physical environment and its characteristics and had lack of information about it. In this scope, it seems that further analysis is needed to understand the teenagers’ lack of interest about the physical environment and design issue, and overemphasis and predominance given to the societal issues and social environment.

With the rise of neo-liberalism, large-scale urban projects (LDPs) have become a powerful mechanism of urban policy. Creating spaces of neo-liberal urbanization such as central business districts, tourism centers, gated residences and shopping malls, LDPs play a role not only in the reproduction of capital accumulation relations but also in the shift of urban political priorities towards the construction of neo-liberal hegemony. The construction of neo-liberal hegemony and the role played by LDPs in this process could not only be investigated by the analysis of capital accumulation. For such an investigation; the role of state and civil society actors in LDPs, their collaborative and conflictual relationships should be researched and their functions in hegemony should be revealed. In the case of Izmir’s two LDPs, namely the New City Center (NCC) and Inciraltı Tourism Center (ITC) projects, this study analyzes the relationship between the production of space and neo-liberal hegemony. In the NCC project, local governments, investors, local capital organizations and professional chambers collaborated and disseminated hegemonic discourse, which provided social support for the project. Through these relationships and discourses, the NCC project has become a hegemonic project for producing space and constructed neo-liberal hegemony over urban political priorities. In contrast to the NCC project, the ITC project saw no collaboration between state and organized civil society actors. The social opposition against the ITC project, initiated by professional chambers, has brought legal action against the ITC development plans in order to prevent their implementation. As a result, the ITC project did not acquire the consent of organized social groups and failed to become a hegemonic project for producing space.

The large-scale migrations towards large cities that occurred in Turkey after the 1950s have brought about many spatial and social problems. The massive migrant populations moving from rural areas to cities cannot be integrated with the city completely due to these problems. These groups, which settle in the city through informal channels, differentiate in social and economic dimension throughout the city in the course of time. Urban problems caused by the settlement pattern of the large-scale migration in large cities, socio-economic differences and the change of migration quality constitute the spatial divergence. The scarcity of sources in cities and applications performed by upper local institutions on the formal section of the city have created urban inequality throughout the city and accelerated the divergence even further. This study aims to focus on divergences, which occur as a result of the migration movements and are caused by social, economic and spatial inequalities on the area of Ankara-Altındağ Hill Squatter Region. Within the scope of this objective, we examined the spatial segregation as both a physical and a social issue using quantitative and qualitative data. The spatial segregation in Eski Altındağ was followed profoundly in two stages as local plane and supra-local plane, with the help of interviews.