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EVALUATION OF THE BUILD-UP AREAS IN THE HISTORIC URBAN PATTERN
BY USING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
Ó. Balkanay
Middle East Technical University; Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences;
Geodetic and Geographic Information Technologies; 06531, Ankara, Turkey
balkanay(@metu.edu.tr
KEY WORDS: Urban, Cultural Heritage, GIS, History, Human Settlement, Decision Support
ABSTRACT
New buildings in the historic places always constitute problems from past till now. Modern architecture is important for the
continuation of historic and cultural values in historic places that carry out different potentials. Technologic improvements and also
changes in the quality of life yield the unavoidable change in physical space, by means of architectural and urban space within all
scales. In this study it is intended to investigate the built-up urban areas with in historic settlements, to detect the change of the urban
pattern in time, to find out the ratio changes between the historic buildings and non-historic buildings and to determine the kinds of
analysis that could be performed to understand and find out the characteristics of the pattern which would give a perspective to
planning and design by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
I. INTRODUCTION
Historic places, lead the urban built-up space; to gain identity,
to be original beyond others and they add value to built-up
space. In addition to those features; they have to be preserved
because of their cultural, emotional and usage reasons (Zeren;
1981).
Conservation of historic urban space is always a subject of
argument from past till now in every culture. New
developments in technology and changes in life-style, results in
new add ups in historic buildings or construction of new
buildings in empty lots of historic fabric (Batty et al., 1998.).
This brought out the unavoidable outcome of changing and
estranging from the original form of the historic pattern. More
or less the metamorphosis of the original historic urban pattern
yields it to be problematic against constituting sustainable
politics of conservation (Agarwal; 2000). Determining the main
planning decisions like; land-usage, balance of the population
density and transportation routing in a sensitive urban space
which accommodate historic and cultural value naturally appear
as an urban problem (Balkanay O; 2003). Developing a
functional approach to solve the defined problem can only be
possible by analyzing the value and potential of he place
accurately. At this point of view; this study proposes a new
methodology in order to develop Decision Making Systems
(DMS) for creating planning and design strategies and to
provide sketches for supporting stages of planning and design
(Malezewski, 1998).
Data processing and spatial analysis, together with modern
decision analysis techniques were used in this study to
Investigate the built-up urban areas within historic settlements,
to detect the change of the urban pattern and to find out the ratio
changes between the historic buildings and non-historic
buildings in time.
Both empirical evaluation models and models based on expert
knowledge can be applied in this approach. The categories that
represent the characteristics of the buildings were described as
map layers within GIS so that each map layer represents one
915
criterion. GIS was used as the platform in managing combining
and displaying the criterion data and also as a tool for producing
new data (William et al., 1995).
Criterion standardization, weighting and combining were
accomplished by means of multi-criteria evaluation (MCE)
methods; the theoretical background is based on the multi-
attribute utility theory (MAUT) (Glenn et al., 1993).
The historic potential of the districts and the change in this
potential were obtained in order to estimate the development
direction and tendency, to find out the physical value of the
urban historic pattern, to expose the change characteristics of
the pattern and to determine the planning priority between
districts.
Thus the distribution of the similar and dissimilar districts and
their relation in space can be an important criterion for planning
and design. In this concept, Historic Peninsula and Beyoglu
which constitute the historic core of Istanbul are selected as the
case study.
2. STUDY AREA and DATA COLLECTION
The method is illustrated by a case study in Istanbul which
accommodates hundreds of different civilizations from past till
now and connects two continents and countless cultures. In this
concept, Historic Peninsula and Beyoglu which constitute the
historic core of Istanbul are selected as the case study districts
for having unique morphological structure and natural pattern
with cultural. social, economic, visual and monumental values;
for 3000 years.
The criterion which affects the scope and detail of the study is
the data itself. The variety of the analysis changes with respect
to the data's content and detail. In this study two types of data
are considered; geographic data and non-geographic data. The
geographic data contains digital maps of roads, buildings,
boundaries of city, district and neighborhoods etc. Non-
geographic data is the study of "Building Census" which is
completed by “Turkey State Statistics Institute” (SSI) in the
