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Large-scale high-rise architecture projects have been central to the rise of the construction industry in Turkey in recent years. This vertical escalation, however, has not been received without dissidence. Scholars, activists, journalists and officials with different viewpoints have participated in media debates regarding the reasons and consequences of this transformation. In these discussions, stakeholders have raised various environmental, cultural and ethical concerns that the vertical organisation of cities generate. Focussing on juxtapositions of Izmir and Istanbul in debates on urban verticality in the city of Izmir, Turkey's third most populated city, the paper examines how such comparisons with Istanbul, where the recent urban neoliberal transformation is experienced most intensely, have been mobilised to oppose vertical expansion. The paper argues that as a result of the recent centralisation of the Turkish economy around construction, the hyper-visibility of skyscrapers and the concentration of the urban transformation generated by the Turkish construction industry in Istanbul, skyscrapers have become materialised symbols of Istanbul's integration into global capitalism, neoliberal urbanisation, and the difference between Istanbul and other urban centres in Turkey. This example establishes urban verticality as a discursive axis at which urban centres outside of the Global North establish their difference from each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to expose the significant contribution of colour information to the classification of 3D points from dense aerial image matching. In this study, colour information was used to compensate for the lack of additional information in photogrammetric point clouds with the proposed automatic hierarchical rule-based classification approach. Two point-based classification approaches based on only spatial-based features and combining the use of spatial-based features and colour information were developed in order to classify photogrammetric point cloud data. The hierarchical rules were developed using the selected features for the proposed point-based classification approaches. Detailed parameter analyses for the developed rules were carried out in pilot areas. The photogrammetric point clouds from the Zekeriyakoy test site in Istanbul were automatically classified, and ground, building, and vegetation classes were acquired using only spatial-based features and using both spatial-based features and colour information. The contribution of the colour information was clearly seen in the vegetation points classified as buildings in woodland and urban areas, as well as in the ground points classified as vegetation in urban areas. The performed accuracy analysis of photogrammetric 3D point cloud classification with the combined use of spatial-based features and colour information verified the improvement of overall accuracy from 70 to 78% in comparison to the classification of only spatial-based features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City logistics approaches and modeling struggles have a significant role in urban areas in increasing the efficiency of logistics operations and reducing traffic jams and their environmental effects. By developing an effective distribution network for cities, it is possible to compete with the changing world and satisfy flexible customer requirements. In this study, as a real-world case, a city logistics model for Istanbul metropolitan area is designed using multi-objective linear programming that considers the different objectives of the stakeholders in cities by integrating the fuzzy Choquet integral technique in a multi-level distribution network for the automotive spare part industry. This paper makes decisions regarding the amount of product flowing among the echelons, the amount of stock to be kept in the warehouses, and the product delays allowed. While minimizing the transportation cost, holding cost and emission levels during these decisions, the study also aims to maximize the service quality in the warehouses. The model is applied to a logistics network of fifty demand points and thirty time periods which can be considered a middle or large-scale problem. In the model, it is also decided to transport the products with electric or fuel vehicles. In the transport sector, electric vehicles are the key to meet future needs for social, health and other human services. The results are discussed under different scenarios. This research allows the use of such a model in making strategic decisions for the distribution network design in big cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City walls have played a significant role in the history of many cities in both Europe and Anatolia in the Middle Ages. Following the development of war technology, the city walls lost their importance as defensive structures, which led to changes in the urban patterns of walled cities. In the case of Istanbul, the city walls began to lose their defensive role after the Ottoman takeover of the city in the fifteenth century. However, the walls have continued to play new roles beyond defense, such as forming the city's physical, legal, and fiscal boundaries. The Ottoman authorities repaired and conserved the city walls in line with their changing roles, values and meaning for the city. Nevertheless, the city walls in Istanbul were damaged by earthquakes, city fires and particularly urban planning practices in the nineteenth century, as was the case in many walled cities. This paper discusses the intertwined history of preservation and demolition of the city walls by analyzing a cost estimate, dated 1894 and located in the Ottoman State Archives, which was prepared by the modernizing administration of the Ottoman State for the repairs of the Istanbul Land Walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emphasizes the significance of social infrastructure in understanding urban inequality. In addition to its economic opportunities, social infrastructure is one of the distinguishing characteristics of metropolitan areas. In cities of the 21st century, social infrastructure is not equally accessible to all residences. For the development and sustainability of urban life, social infrastructure is fundamental. In terms of establishing a sense of belonging and integration to contemporary urban life, social infrastructure is highly crucial especially for refugees and rural migrants who migrate to the periphery of big cities. By evaluating the findings of this study conducted in Esenler District, we aim to contribute to research dealing with urban inequalities in Istanbul from the perspective of social infrastructure. To fill a gap in the literature, the social infrastructure of the Esenler District, which consists of rural-to-urban migration, refugee flow, and the working class in Istanbul's periphery, was analyzed by comparing it to other districts. The database created from various data sources and satellite images is presented with thematic maps. According to the findings, there is a significant divide between the central and peripheral districts of Istanbul in terms of social infrastructure. This inequality manifests itself in four ways: education, health, recreation, and fuel for housing. First, there are serious problems, such as the limited number of kindergartens, the high-class size in primary schools, and the poor quality of high schools in front of Esenler, which has a low education level. Second, there are only six healthcare centers in Esenler, where health services are inadequate compared to the central districts. Third, the green space cannot meet the recreational needs of the dense population in the district where unplanned and intensive construction has left no free space. Due to limited purchasing power, natural gas usage in Esenler is fairly low compared to central districts, despite the dense population. On the basis of these indicators, it has been concluded that the Esenler District, lacks the essential social infrastructure services necessary to maintain the city's health. Therefore, strengthening the social infrastructure on the urban periphery is a primary concern for developing a better understanding of urban inequalities, preventing problems, and making livable urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods help researchers in solving many problems in terms of numerical analysis. However, MCDM methods have not been very popular in the health sector. In this study, five ones of Turkey's most intense and highly populated cities were selected and the risk of the spread of Covid-19 disease was evaluated on the basis of seven criteria. The PROMETHEE and the ELECTRE methods were conducted to rank the cities in terms of the spread of Covid-19. The PROMETHEE method correctly ranked the most risky city as Istanbul, but ELECTRE ranked Istanbul the second most risky. The results of the methods are compared with real data. PROMETHEE gave more convenient results than ELECTRE. Also, this paper offers a new field of study to the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]