ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITY ARCH 310 – INTRODUCTION TO URBAN DESIGN SPRING 2019
PROBLEMATIZING PUBLIC SPACES, “SIDEWALKS” IN TURKEY
M. TAYLAN TOSUN 11695136
Public spaces are various areas that all people can use without some certain limits, rules and pay some fee. Unless some have rules and boundaries in public properties which owned by government but there is no obligation to pay fee, so public properties are different subjects that may be a public space.1 Variety of public spaces are much, such as parks, squares, beaches and sidewalks which is the most comprehensive urban element that spreaded the entire city. Most of the public spaces are exist to primary aim citizens or visitors can use for spending time or a meeting point but the sidewalks are public spaces which have a different primary goal that providing transportation flow for pedestrians. So the sidewalks are some abstractions and are nothing without the city and places where people to transform or nearby units.2 It has certain sizes as height or width according to municipalities but the important thing is how much is left for the people who use for transportation. In Turkey, there is a crucial problem about this situation. This essay will argue that main problems about an important type of public space, sidewalks as; sidewalk occupations with vehicles and commercial elements, the excessive heights of sidewalks and connections between vehicle road, lack of some functions, planting in Turkey and their reasons why creating problems and possible solutions with urban and landscape designs. There is an important problem about sidewalk occupations in Turkey. However the laws about sidewalk using by commercial units, some places according to their municipalities still occupied the sidewalk more than necessary. “The function of the sidewalk is understood to be the promotion and facilitation of pedestrian flow and circulation, predicated on the appropriate arrangement of people and objects.â€?3. So, decreasing the sidewalk width by commercial units disrupts the flow of pedestrians circulation and causes blending commercial elements with public spaces. The main reason is the owner of the commercial unit demand to using the maximum space of its plot. On the other hand, vehicles park on the sidewalk in some situations like lack of parking lots or handling some material from a manufacture place. AlibeykĂśy in Istanbul, Turkey have some instances about this problem. There is a big truck parks everyday on the sidewalk, in front of a manufucture to handling some materials producted which are lots of metal scaffolding elements. The truck waits on the sidewalk for lots of hours and blocks the pedestrian circulation in this period. So, it causes that people have to pass through the truck by step down the vehicle road and then walk. This problem endanger the people who try to use this public space because of a blocking truck. With correct designs like adding parking lanes, there is no need for penalties anymore. Also if there is no any conditions to create parking lanes front of a sidewalk to solve the
problem, the manufacturers which block the sidewalk with material trucks shouldn’t have permission to use that place for manufucture. Also, existing same type of functions in same streets can solve this sidewalk occupation. It affects the design of sidewalks and its width according to the function of commercial unit. So planners collaborating with public works departments is a necessicity. 4 Another problem about the public space, sidewalks; is the height and connections between the vehicle road. There is a famous quote also N. Keleş mentioned, “Sidewalk height is inversely proportional to civilization level of a city”5. To seperate the pedestrian and vehicle circulation in Turkey, sidewalk heights being kept in excessive values like around 27 cm. This provides safety for pedestrians but creates challanges for people with disabilites because lack of ramps to these high sidewalks is also another public space problem. In the other countries, these numbers kept around maximum 15 cm. Whereas sidewalks would be constucted at minimum heights, even with no height and just a drawn line if Turkey has that growth, but the car accidents do not give permission. In Turkey, 10,000 people die in a year and %19 of its ratio is the people died who are pedestrians6. Instead of raisen the sidewalks, adding new elements like bicycle roads which are usually not considered, or planting at the end of sidewalks can create a barrier between pedestrians and vehicles. Besides, planting must be correctly selected which are resistant to highway exhaust and create shadows to blocking the over sunlight. To conclude, the sidewalks are the most crucial public spaces in a city however the most general ones are the parks and activity spaces. It is different than other public spaces with its goal and function. Because of its sizes, problems can easily happen in Turkey. Their designs according to nearby units haven’t being considered and blocking the circulation also people with disabilities not considered by lack of ramps to excessive heights of sidewalks and one of the biggest reason is car accidents affects negatively in Turkey. With designing correctly and considering the use of people, this problems can be solved.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Dyer, H. and Ngui, M. (2010). Watch this space. Toronto, Ont: Kids Can Press. 2. Jacobs, J. and Epstein, J. (2011). The death and life of great American cities. New York: Modern Library, p.37. 3. Blomley, N. (2010). Rights of passage. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 4. Loukaitou-Sideris, A. and Ehrenfeucht, R. (2009). Sidewalks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 5. Keleş, N. (2017). Yansımalar. 6. Who.int. (2019). WHO | Road safety in Turkey. [online] Available at: https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_traffic/countrywork/tur/en/.