Evaluation on Living Public Spaces and Their Qualities - Case Study from Ankara Konur, Karanfil and Yüksel Streets

Abstract

Public spaces constitute one of the main elements of the living cities. They stand out as places reflecting the social structure of the society and the past values. They appear as the places one can observe the changes and modernity of the society as well as socializing places. Following to private and semi-private spaces, public spaces such as streets, squares and parks provide people a chance to be together and contact with each other. In living and vibrant places with these random appointments they feel that they belong to social urban life. Therefore, well-designed living public spaces are important indicators of the quality of life and user satisfaction. In the scope of this paper the basic principles and design criteria that create living public spaces and their effects on user satisfaction are discussed. By analysing the spatial reflections of used design criteria it is aimed to relate the existing arrangements to user satisfaction. For these analysis, Yüksel Street located at Kızılay Square in Ankara centre and side streets of Karanfil and Konur (all car-free) were selected as case study area. This area is one of the most important and most densely used pedestrian zone of the capital with its green pattern, location and crossroads. At the beginning, basic design criteria and implementation methods are detailed with the literature survey. Then basic criteria and design principles are verified by using field studies including a survey with randomly asked 270 questionnaires. For defining the user satisfaction and bringing out the qualifications and failures in the case study area user surveys are analysed by field study observations and SPSS Statistics software. Finally, practical suggestions which are believed to be useful for this type of public places in developing and less developed countries are proposed