Urban form and walkability: the assessment of walkability capacity of Ankara

Download

index.pdf

Date

2018

Author

Ak, Aslı

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

608
views

396
downloads

Walkable cities are one of the major requirements of sustainable and livable cities. From the 1960s to nowadays, contemporary cities have been shaped and developed through an automobile-oriented planning which neglects of public transport users, pedestrians and cyclists, promotes urban sprawl leading to a high-costly infrastructural investments. Based on privately owned car-oriented transportation policies and rapid urbanization dynamics, cities grow fast by sprawling with uncontrolled building densities, while increasing environmental pollution, raising social and economic inequalities, public health problems, causing destructive effects on agricultural productive lands, open green spaces and forest lands, natural wild life. All these problems threaten economic, social, environmental and ecological sustainability of cities. This research mainly argues that there is a strong relationship between urban form and walkability capacity of a city or urban environment. It aims to show that walkability of cities should be studied, planned and designed based on three major scales: macro scale, meso scale and micro scale. By identifying the key walkability parameters of each scale, it seeks to develop a walkability assessment approach to develop more sustainable urban forms at macro, meso and micro scales. By using Ankara as the case study and focusing two neighborhoods in the city, it assesses the walkability capacity of urban environments at different levels. By using the walkability assessment method on the two different districts –Kavaklıdere and Çukurambar- and two main mix-used streets of these districts with different urban form qualities, it also shows the different walkability capacity of urban form at meso and micro scales.

Subject Keywords

Urbanization., Cities and towns., Pedestrian areas., Public spaces., Pavements., Sidewalks.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12622409/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/27736

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Analyzing safety toward a walkable campus: a case-study of Middle East Technical University (METU) Rashidi, Soghra; Akkar Ercan, Z. Müge.; Urban Design in City and Regional Planning Department (2019) Walkable places are one of the most common features of sustainable, vibrant and healthy cities in the world. Building walkable cities can be a strategy to mitigate some of the problems related to sustainability. As a part of a city, university campus sites provide learning, working and sometimes living environments where mobility and pedestrian walkability should be considered as important design factors to achieve sustainable urban environments. Walkable environments should be the spaces which provide camp...
Reclaiming pedestrian-oriented places to increase walkability in city center the case of Yüksel Street, Ankara Farnian, Saideh; Yetişkul Şenbil, Emine; Department of City and Regional Planning (2014) Walking as the basic, cheapest and the most affordable way of transportation, recreation and socialization is a significant means of experiencing a city. Walkability of a city is a measure of how friendly, safe and attractive a city is to walk within it. Walking in a city and the extent to which the built environment supports walking is signifier of civilization and popular walkable spaces particularly in city center are considered as part of collective memory of a city. Accordingly, a well-designed walkabl...
Low-rise housing development in Ankara Şenyel, Müzeyyen Anıl; Türel, Ali; Department of City and Regional Planning (2006) Urban land prices have important effects on urban development and locational distribution of land-uses. Housing is one of those sectors. There are high-density residential areas covering high-rise apartments at the city center where the land prices are quite high. Here, sizes of the plots and the housing units are relatively small. However, land prices begin to decrease with the increasing distance from the city center and the production of low-density, low-rise housing which is economically unfeasible at t...
Urban compactness : a study of Ankara urban form Çalışkan, Olgu; Günay, Baykan; Urban Design in City and Regional Planning Department (2003) Sustainable urban development is mentioned together with the concept of urban form in contemporary planning literature. The main reason behind this is a need for determining an ideal physical development scheme and its main principles of urban future in a broad term. Besides, the operational side of urban planning requires a concrete set of design codes in order to transform urban space in both macro and mezzo scale. At this point, the concept of urban compactness and the idea of Compact City have come into...
The transformation of urban space at the conjunction of the old and new districts : the city of Aleppo Miroğlu, Ebru Aras; Sargın, Güven Arif; Urban Design in City and Regional Planning Department (2005) The urban space is subjected to countless transformations depending on multiple reasons such as urban planning decisions, the administrative system and regulations. In this context, the aim of this thesis is to reveal the spatial transformation of an urban area at the conjunction of the old and new districts of a historical city. A morphological analysis method depending on quantitative and qualitative chaarcteristics will be utilized to understand its changing spatiality.

Citation Formats

A. Ak, “Urban form and walkability: the assessment of walkability capacity of Ankara,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2018.