An Analysis about Spatial Richness of the Streets as a Building Stone of Urban Image via Fractal Geometry

Abstract

In the historical process, social, cultural, and physical changes and transformations have occurred in many areas. In the 21st century, changes have begun to be seen in the approaches to cities. It is considered that the city of the future is not going to be a continuation of the cities of the past no longer. Cities, which are formed with an infinite number of elements and structures, are now explained as dynamic, non-linear, complex systems that are in constant change and transformation. In the changing new approach, it is stated that the most important element that defines cities and contributes significantly to their identities is the richness of urban space. In this context, the richness of urban space was evaluated by the fractal geometry method within the study. This street-scale study provides an analysis of the spatial richness of 46 streets selected from the cities of Istanbul and Ankara. The differentiation of physical qualities was decisive in the selection of streets as the sample area. First, the fractal dimensions of the street images were calculated with the help of the HarFa 5.5 program, and correlation analysis was performed in the SPSS 22 program to decide the connection between the obtained values and the physical qualities of the streets. As a result of the analysis, it has been decided that the total number of buildings, the number of buildings with distinctive frontage arrangements, the density of the building facades, the intensity of the reinforcement and elements, the frequency of the landscape elements, the street width and the closure rate affect the fractal dimension in a statistically significant way.