Tracing regional differences on the urban space The case of Ankara

The paper intends to reveal the effects of regional differences on urban space in terms of physical, social and economic characteristics. In this sense, both Turkey itself and its big cities are considerable, due to their internal and external dynamics. To begin with, Turkey is exposed to a regional segregation - relatively more developed western part, and relatively less developed eastern part - for decades. Due to the development differences, there has been an ongoing migration from the east to the big cities of the west. It is believed that the process has complex social, economic and cultural dimensions which have great impacts on the destination cities. Ankara is one them that receives mass migration waves since the 1940s. Drastic increase in urban population resulted in various problems, such as urban disintegration. We claim that the problem of urban disintegration in Ankara is a reflection of Turkey’s regional differences. In order to find out the repercussions of regional differences on urban land, we first located the population who migrated from less developed regions (socially and economically), on the basis of neighborhoods. With the help of the statistical methods that reveal the dominant feature of the selected area, we examined the physical, social and economic characteristics of the neighborhoods. To display the physical, social and economic integration levels of neighborhoods, we selected certain indicators such as building statistics, fertility rates, education levels, participation to labor force, employed population by occupation, etc. At the end, as a final product we construct a map of Ankara with integrated and disintegrated regions with their major characteristics