A research on urban identity: sample of Konya

Abstract

It is obvius that social, economical and technologic developments of 20th century result in a number of new changes and transformations on urban spaces. Today cities are far from their traditional patterns and reflect new developing identity to urban spaces. The basic aim of this study which is assuming “every city and every era has an identity” is to display Konya’s old and new identity through the analysis of historical period and to develop   effective suggestions for developing and sustaining the present identity of the city. According to this aim, in the scope of the study, first of all Konya’s changing identity was examined in the historical period and displayed old and new identity formations of the city. With these research, it was seen that Konya city stand out with three different districts which are come from the historic period, differ in properties of man-made environment and which acquire a shape with today’s different plan decisions. On the next stage of the study, one neighbourhood (Hacı Şaban, Piri Mehmet Paşa and Feritpaşa neighbourhoods) from each district (Meram, Karatay and Selçuklu) which reflects the general pattern and identity of the district were selected as sample areas. In these selected neighbourhoods visual analysis were done in accordance with man-made environment identity components that was come from the theoretical approach to display the different identity elements of the districts.  Subsequently, a total of 384 questionnaire interview which reflects %0.05 sampling ratio were done with the users of the selected neighbourhoods to understand how the users perceive their environment, what is the positive and negative man-made identity elements of the neighbourhood, what is the requests/appreciations of the users related to the subject and to develop suggestions for the future of the city identity. For questionnaire interviews random and systematic sampling techniques were used. The results that come from the interviews were evaluated with frequency distribution analysis and content analysis techniques. In conclusion of the study some suggestions for possible future plan and projects were developed on behalf of Konya’s man-made environment identity. All these man-made environment identity elements are important for developing urban identity and making alive the urban image.