Assessing Urban Morphological Complexity Through Fractal Geometry: Evidence From Turkish Cities

Date

2025-12-01

Author

Özdemir, Sıla
Şahin, Mustafa Raşit
Yetişkul Şenbil, Emine

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Complexity science examines the emergence of structure in self-organising open systems, where interactions among individual components give rise to dynamic and adaptive patterns. Within this paradigm, cities are conceptualised as complex systems characterised by adaptability, self-organisation and sensitivity to initial conditions, reshaping how urban environments are understood. Urban planning literature increasingly adopts this perspective, recognising that cities evolve through non-linear processes and often exhibit self-similar spatial configurations. Fractal geometry, introduced by Mandelbrot, provides a powerful analytical framework in this context, enabling the identification and measurement of structural complexity in urban systems by means of the fractal dimension [Fd].This study synthesises the theoretical background of fractal structures in cities and outlines the main methods of fractal analysis, with a particular focus on their relevance for urban morphology and planning. It discusses key approaches such as multi-scale, self-affine and multi-fractal analyses, explaining how these methods capture density, continuity, fragmentation and boundary complexity in urban form. Drawing on empirical studies, especially those conducted in Turkish cities, the paper examines spatial patterns of Fd values from city centres to peripheral zones and explores the relationships between fractal dimension, urban sprawl, road network hierarchy and planning decisions. The findings demonstrate that fractal geometry offers a robust quantitative framework for assessing spatial heterogeneity, evaluating urban compactness and monitoring fragmentation processes. In doing so, fractal approaches strengthen the role of quantitative methods in contemporary urban planning by providing tools to guide sustainable and resilient urban growth.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118889
https://izlik.org/JA85DP69WN

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Department of City and Regional Planning, Article