Criticism of Istanbul inner city urban transportation from the perspective of urban form

Abstract

This paper describes how economic and social changes are key factors of urbanization in developing countries. Urban mobility or transportation, which developed to satisfy certain needs, grew as an issue while urban areas expanded and populations increased parallel to urban expansion. A higher weight of road usage for urban inner city transportation has worrying results, especially in populated and widespread cities. This situation, which is a consequence of uncontrolled development of urban macroform, along with underdeveloped city transportation technology, creates problems such as population-accessibility, sprawling of the city (without any step changes), insufficient mass-transport and time-location relation dependency on distance. The objective of this paper is to explain how the urban form of Istanbul became unlivable, unperceivable and unsustainable, while the city converted from a pedestrian and waterfront city to an automobile and land-based city. Inner city transportation in Istanbul is mainly solved through roads, which causes worrying results regarding urban form. One result is the urban growth towards the natural resources residing at the north of the city. Transformation to a pedestrian city, which is integrated to a mass-transport system, is the remedy to stop this growth. This problem can be solved by strategic decisions taken within an integrated approach. This paper investigated the problem within urban form – urban (inner city) transportation relation and a solution is sought with a strategic approach.