Measuring the relationship between spatial configuration, diversity and user behavior: A Post Occupancy Evaluation study in Istanbul’s peripheral districts

Authors

  • Ayse Ozbil Torun Assoc. Prof. Dr., Northumbria University, UK

    Ayse Ozbil is an Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Northumbria University. Her research interests mainly lie in the fields of spatial modeling and urban form analysis using space syntax techniques. Her work is directed towards pedestrian-friendly neighborhood and street design strategies enhancing active transportation in cities. Her recent studies have focused on walkability and obesity, transit-oriented planning, post occupancy evaluation and design of sustainable cities. Dr. Ozbil has been a member of the editorial board of Urban Design International since 2012, and her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals.

  • Demet Yesiltepe Researcher, Notrhumbria University, UK

    Demet Yesiltepe is an urban planner and designer, and currently a PhD student in Architecture and Built Environment at Northumbria University. Her PhD research contributes to the understanding of how spatial layouts, particularly the presence of landmarks, affect people’s navigational performances and what factors make it easier or more challenging for people to find their way. Her research interests include geographic information systems (GIS), Space Syntax, spatial analysis, walkability, urban form modelling and urban design.

  • Sertac Erten Dr., ARUP, Turkey

    Sertac Erten leads Masterplanning and Urban Design Services at Arup-Turkey. She has a professional and academic background of more than 20 years. A city planner by training with MsC and PhD degrees in urban design in Middle East Technical University, she brings an expert for integrated complex systems in built environment at Arup while she lectures in several universities in architectural departments in Istanbul. Sertac has a broad experience of planning / urban design consultancies for local governments of Turkish cities. She participated and leaded several award-winning urban design competitions in Turkey. Her focus areas are urban design competitions, neighbourhood and street-scale projects, large-scale masterplanning, ArcGIS in urban design scale, localization of UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) in masterplans, design and masterplanning of Science and Technology Parks (STPs).

  • Ozlem Ozer Assist. Prof. Dr. Istanbul Gelisim University, Turkey

    Özlem Özer is a city planner specializing in spatial analysis of road networks, strategic planning and GIS technologies. She received her PhD in Urban and Regional Planning in 2014. She worked as an urban planner in national and international planning projects for 8 years before becoming an academic. After spending one year as a guest lecturer in Environmental Planning and Design graduate program in University of Georgia in 2010, she has started to work as an academic in Architecture and Urban Design departments in Turkey. She is currently working as a lecturer at the Architecture Department of Istanbul Gelişim University. Her research interests focus on the spatial analysis of the urban environment and the effects of spatial relationships on user behavior.

  • Tugce Gurleyen Researcher, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey

    Tuğçe Gürleyen graduated from the Middle East Technical University, Department of City and Regional Planning in 2015. She received her master’s degree from Istanbul Technical University, City Planning Program by her thesis named “Spatial narrative of memory trajectories in urban amnesia: An etnographic view of everyday life of Bomonti” in 2018. She is still on her PhD studies in the City and Regional Planning of Istanbul Technical University. She worked as a project assistant at Özyeğin University from 2015 to 2018. She worked as an urban designer at EnsPd Project Development in 2017. Between 2017 and 2019, she worked as an instructor at Medipol University. She gave various courses in the Department of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture and Department of Architecture. She still continues her professional career at Arup where she started working as an urban planner in 2019. Her research areas focus on temporary urbanism, participatory urban design, urban sociology, community engagement, pedestrian mobility, streetscape, place-memory relations, mapping and visualization.

  • Ezgi Zunbuloglu City Planner, Turkey

    Ezgi Zünbüloğlu graduated from ITU as an urban planner in 2015 and she received an acceptance from Urban Design M.Sc. in the same year. During the master's degree she participated in various research projects. Due to her interest in symbols in urban space and their effects on users and perception of urban space, she completed her master's thesis with the study "Semantics, Perception and Graffiti in Urban Space''. Lastly, within the scope of the project carried out with the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, she took part in the team established to digitize the land use plans and implementary development plans in order to create a 3D database, extracting plan notes, and determining and organizing the connection of lower and upper scale plans.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47818/DRArch.2020.v1i1006

Keywords:

Post Occupancy Evaluation, space syntax, user perceptions, Istanbul, peripheral urban squares

Abstract

Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is a robust tool to systematically evaluate the effects of design decisions on spatial performance and to identify the relationship between the space and its users. Although there is a growing body of POE research on complex buildings, such as hospitals and education spaces, studies on the POE evaluation of public open spaces are limited. More importantly, few studies have investigated public squares designed at the periphery and how they are used.

This study aims to identify the extent to which spatial configuration of public squares is related to users’ behavior (i.e., modes/distances of access, level of satisfaction). For this purpose, we focused on four peripheral urban squares located in Istanbul, Turkey. The methodology applied in the study includes a synthesis of three types of expertise: 1) behavioral mapping of urban squares (through the analysis of patterns of use based on direct observation), 2) cognitive evaluation of spaces based on perceived factors (through user questionnaires), and 3) quantifying urban public spaces objectively (through the methodology of space syntax and urban morphology).

The results identify associations between objective characteristics of public spaces designed at the peripheral districts, patterns of use and users’ perception of these areas, to a certain extent. For example, the variety and intensity of activities within the square as well as the length of occupancy are highest for Avcılar square, which is most integrated within its urban surroundings with reduced average block size. An important finding is the association between the average street connectivity levels of these squares with their pedestrian catchment areas. In other words, the more integrated a public urban space is with its surroundings (800mt buffers), its users will access this space on foot from a larger distance. Based on these findings, spatial configuration as measured by space syntax measures appears to be an explanatory measure assessing the potentiality of public open spaces for bringing users together, hence, creating a lively, well-used space. However, the results also point to some disagreements between the perceived (users’ evaluations) and objective (syntactic analysis) measurements, which indicate that both types of measurements are needed in POE research of public spaces. 

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Published

2020-12-29

How to Cite

Ozbil Torun, A., Yesiltepe, D., Erten, S., Ozer, O., Gurleyen, T., & Zunbuloglu, E. (2020). Measuring the relationship between spatial configuration, diversity and user behavior: A Post Occupancy Evaluation study in Istanbul’s peripheral districts. Journal of Design for Resilience in Architecture and Planning, 1(1), 84–102. https://doi.org/10.47818/DRArch.2020.v1i1006

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Vol. 1 No. 1 (2020)

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Research Articles

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