Applying a Morphological Approach into Istanbul’s Urban Landscape

This paper proposes a methodology based on the concept of morphological region and the method of morphological regionalization. The concept has been proposed by M.R.G. Conzen in the early 1960s, and promoted by J.W.R. Whitehand and his colleagues at the University of Birmingham mainly from the late 1980s. A morphological region is an area that has unity in respect of its form that distinguishes it from surrounding areas, based on a combination of town-plan, building fabric, and land and building utilization (Conzen’s tripartite division of the urban landscape). The methodology is based on a set of criteria considering the tripartite division of the urban landscape. Age of streets, streets geometry, plot layout, and building coverage are four criteria offered on the basis of the town-plan. Architectural style, building material, and height are proposed on the basis of the building fabric. Finally, land and building utilization is used to design the methodology. The methodology is applied to the Fatih District, the historical core of Istanbul. A four-tier hierarchy of regions is identified. The map of first-order morphological regions can offer the basis to produce a map of planning zones—a key tool to guide urban landscape management. Lower order regions can support the formulation of regulations for each planning zone, framing the design of new forms, assuring a strong relationship with extant urban forms. These ideas, detailed in the paper, are of great relevance for spatial planning, particularly for Turkish planning, where regulations are very generic and do not acknowledge the specific character of each urban landscape.