Urban green spaces are one of the layers of urban pattern. The urban environment is created through the complex relationships between natural, social, economic, and politic dynamics. Similar to the urban environment, as a produced landscape, characteristics of urban green spaces vary according to the social, economic, cultural and ecological context of urban society. In the last few decades, the &ldquo / quality of urban life target&rdquo / included in the sustainability approach, has became an important touchstone to increase the quality of urban environment in today&rsquo / s world / with its tendencies of covering of perpetual subjective values and in addition to objective conditions to identify &ldquo / individual&rsquo / s satisfaction&rdquo / as a target the by, of keeping its evaluation scope broad and holistic, and of deriving supporting the daily life practices which derive from participatory processes. Among the quality of life perspective, urban green spaces are interpretated in a holistic and broad framework in boundaries of their contributions to the inhabitants&rsquo / well-being through their physical, social, economic and ecological links with life in a broad scale spectrum ranging from individual level to city scale. In today&rsquo / s urban environment, Ankara&rsquo / s urban green spaces are planned by the responsible agents within a narrow framework / separated from urban and urban life, lacked of this multi-scale and multi-dimensional perspective, stucked in the sectoral targets of institutions. At this point, the study identifies the priorities and conditions to re-establish a well-functioned planning process for the green spaces of Ankara with a particular attention to quality of life.

Restructuring processes provide key dynamics for the development and transformation of industrial structures. Industrial restructuring can be conceptualized by product and/or process innovations including technological improvements and relocation of industry. Such forms of transformation can be investigated by a critical examination of industrial relations. This thesis is motivated from such a consideration of understanding and interpreting industrial transformation in a specific time and space setting. Textile and garment industry is a good case to explore the abovementioned concepts. Firstly global and national dimensions of industry are investigated. It is understood that quota free regulations of trade and relocation of production have been shaping a fierce global competition by which employment, supply and marketing relations change dramatically at the world scale. In such new competitive conditions Turkish textile and garment industry has been losing its growth dynamics in terms of price competition advantage. Secondly Denizli case is investigated. In-depth interviews with firms, related chambers and unions are made during field survey. Thesis argued that Denizli has locked to a passive exporter role. In this lock-in process, the sector could not transform itself by innovative modes of restructuring. The passive exporter role disables region to adopt innovative product strategies and to shift production to other regions where cost cutting opportunities are provided. Industrialists decrease production costs informally including employment unregistered workers. However although survey results point out locked industrial dynamics, Denizli region still have the potential of regional development thanks to its entrepreneurial sprit and rising other economic sectors.

In the last three decades, depending on advances in communication technologies, there is a popular discussion that urban functions can be located independent from space. In other words, each urban function can locate to any zones of a city due to communication technology-based connections, in a so called deterritorialization. These new sprawl-based locations can be seen in the central business districts (CBD) of cities, especially by producer service functions. This thesis will investigate the validity of deterritorialization-based post-modern theoretical studies concerning recent transformation of CBDs based solely on the Western city, with reference to the distribution of such activities in Ankara and its CBD structure. Producer services can be used to test the space relations of urban functions due to their complexity and more flexible connection capacities. For this purpose, first the concepts and the fields of concepts that are based on CBDs and producer services are examined. Thereafter, these theoretical and analytical frameworks are tested in a comprehensive evaluation of urban and central growth. Ankara has been chosen as the subject of the case study due to the new locational nodes in the city and the significant threat of decline in the CBD of Kizilay, which is still the main core of city. The relations between urban space and the locational preferences of producer services in Ankara are assessed to illustrate the reterritorialization-based movements within the urban space. Finally, the implications and contributions of the study and also suggestions for possible further studies are presented as concluding remarks.

&ldquo / New paradigm of disability&rdquo / relates not only to persons but also to the environment they are living in. Therefore recent studies concentrate on the dynamic interplay of the persons and the environment, rather than rather than studying them as separate entities. This approach has revealed that disabled people become handicapped when they face with barriers restricting or impeding their activities in daily life. Physical, cultural and social barriers have been undertaken by many countries after substantial debate. In the United Kingdom and Japan for instance, disability and accessibility issues have been tackled with reference to disabled people&rsquo / s demands and long-tem struggles against discriminatory implementations in the past. In these countries, whilst disability issue has been discussed, accessibility legislation including numerous measurements for implementation has been enacted and a considerable progress for removing barriers and providing accessibility in the built environment has been experienced through many institutional instruments. In Turkey, although there are now a lot of legislative measurements for accessibility, little progress is observed in recent years. Barriers in the built environment are still restricting, and even hindering full participation of disabled v people to social life. The problem of inaccessibility is seen related to practice rather than legislation or theoretical frameworks in Turkey. Since they are a part of the bureaucratic system having responsibility on the planning and designing of built environment, local agencies with their administrative and technical staff and organisation gain importance in terms of maintaining accessibility to the disabled. The study aims to provide information about attitudes of local agencies towards disability and accessibility in terms of practitioners rather than users. This study interrogates the knowledge level and outlooks of the related personnel and works of local agencies about disability and accessibility.

The empirical literature in economic geography has recently dealt with two fundamental questions, whether growth or innovation is spatially bounded or not and how far the economic growth is determined by knowledge. In this thesis, relations between economic growth and knowledge relation is discussed from spatial spillovers perspective with the help of spatial econometric techniques. Adding city-region discussion to the existing literature, the thesis aims to evaluate the economic growth and knowledge spillovers from a broader perspective. The selected cases are two dynamic and rapidly transforming centers, namely izmir and Antalya City-regions and the results suggest the strong relevance of proximity effects and spillovers in both of the cases. Moreover, the analyses show that growth and knowledge spillovers operate in opposite directions rather than a parallel pattern as expected in Knowledge Based Economy discussions.

The main aim of the thesis is to analyse the recent socio-spatial patterns of Istanbul, in which squatter areas on publicly-owned land (gecekondu) and old historical centre of the city are subjected to regeneration projects, under the impact of making Istanbul a purified place for the significant social classes via exclusion of the others. The formulations of Henri Lefebvre for analysing the production of (social) space are used as the conceptual framework of the thesis. To reveal the case study, the recent urban regeneration projects in Istanbul, a wide range of qualitative data collection techniques and methodology, documentary analysis, in-depth interviews, participant observations, which will pave a way to understand the complex relations among social and spatial formations, are used. According to the analysis on the acceleration of urban regeneration projects in the city of Istanbul, the thesis argues two main points: Firstly, the specificity of urbanisation period in Istanbul after 2000 is characterised with the strong role of the central state, mainly MHA. Secondly, the people, who are living in the gecekondu areas and old historical centres in the inner city are not only evicted from their living spaces, they are also socially and spatially excluded from the city centres.

Urban development has long been the major threat to archaeological sites. Recent theoretical discussions advocate that archaeological sites in urban areas should be protected not only through technical solutions and archaeological studies, but also through spatial planning processes, which define basic mechanisms to direct and control the urban development. Despite a specific type of spatial plan, the &amp / #8216 / conservation plan&amp / #8217 / in Turkish legislation, negative impacts of urban development on archeological sites could not be successfully eliminated. This is due to the reason that conservation and planning systems do not concern &amp / #8216 / integration of the archaeological site with the urban built environment&amp / #8217 / , which results in either isolation or destruction of the archaeological remains. Based on this assumption, the objective of this dissertation is to determine in which points Turkish conservation and planning systems fail to achieve integration and how this failure could be overcame. Turkish conservation and planning systems are evaluated on selected case study area, Soli-Pompeiopolis Archaeological Site, by using three-step qualitative analysis methodology. First, conservation and planning decisions and the built environment shaped by these decisions are examined in details through process analysis. Then, based on qualities of spatial planning process redefined through theoretical discussions, &amp / #8216 / process integration&amp / #8217 / and &amp / #8216 / outcome integration&amp / #8217 / are evaluated through context analysis. Lastly, reasons of problematic issues on integration are discussed through causality analysis. Concluding the study, a discussion is carried on how to achieve &amp / #8216 / integration of conservation of archaeological sites in urban areas into spatial planning processes&amp / #8217 / by making modifications within the &amp / #8216 / Turkish conservation and planning systems&amp / #8217 / .

The aim of the thesis is to examine the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Planning that is recognized as the most appropriate approach in the international arena for the wise-use and sustainability of water resources. In this framework, the thesis has been organized in two major parts: Theoretical framework and the Konya Closed Basin case study analysis. The first part draws a theoretical framework on IWRM planning and discusses its principles, aims and implementation tools through an internationally accepted point of view. The second part, meanwhile, examines the interpretation of the IWRM planning in Turkey and its implementation in the case of the Konya Closed Basin IWRM Planning Process. The study reveals that only an integrated approach at the basin scale can solve the water demand problems of different human activities, which puts pressure on the carrying capacity of the water resources and their basins. Despite the inadequacies in the related institutional and legal frameworks in Turkey, Konya Closed Basin IWRM planning, especially Tuz Lake Management Plan studies, comes to forefront as a pioneering IWRM planning practice: The capacity building, public participation, and awareness raising principles of the IWRM planning approach have been positively realized during this planning process. Besides, the components of the plan are also compatible with the theory of IWRM planning, which consists of strategic, goal-oriented, and participatory planning approaches.

The important positions and proposals of the thesis are firstly the framework posited for a socially sustainable urban environment, and secondly a proposal for the parameters of place formation for sustainable urban design. Research into social sustainability has provided a variety of approaches among which Castells&amp / #8217 / model for urban movements have been adapted as a matrix for social organization in terms of placemaking, highlighting the goals of an urban movement, in this case of a place, with the citizen as urban actor, against its adversary the historical actor. As for the parameters of place formation a matrix of place is developed as a tool for urban design and for measuring urban sustainability. The matrix delineates the six dimensions of place in terms of the three sustainabilities most strongly involved in each / to be measured by the indicators of sustainability which are to be achieved by applying various strategies for urban design. As a result of the study of the underlying dynamics of the paradigms of sustainability, place, and place-making, and the shifting role of urban design necessitated by problems of urbaproposed within a discourse that prefers to see the three sustainabilities in conjunction and, believes socially sustainable communities to be also environmentally and economically sustainable- the issue becomes how to facilitate a place process through urban design. Place as a social product, and place as an experiential, cognitive construct, place as object and subject of place-making, and place as a geographically specific, historical materialist formation are the four vantage points from which to inspect the juxtapositions and differences of the concept / and may be arrive at a theory of place. The predilection that sustainability and urbanization can be evaluated via placemaking stems, on one hand, from a study of the city/urbanization through the works of Harvey, Castells, Lefebvre and Bookchin who emphasize social space/process in the face of physical/geometric space / and an architectural background/disposition which finds place congenial on the other hand. The paradigm of sustainability and place, and place-making as urban design is applied to the case of Temelli, Ankara for a critique of sustainable/unsustainable urbanization. As a geographic, social, economic and historical location within the Greater Municipality of Ankara, Temelli has been a region of attraction for investors since the 1990s. What was once a small village planned for settling Balkan immigrants, became a municipality in 1994 / the land within the municipal boundaries were increased tenfold, and the region was earmarked for an overspill of 650,000 people from Ankara Metropolitan Area in the next 20 years. Four residential areas in the region have been assessed comparatively in terms of sustainable urban forms / and an evaluation of everyday lives have been conducted through surveys and interviews with residents to observe how and if place as social product evolved / how the conceived, perceived and lived spaces interacted.

With the emergence of urban transformation concept in 1980s, the concept of eligibility has also started to be discussed as a new term in Turkey. However, the absence of a sustainable urban transformation law which defines the criteria of eligibility of stakeholders has undoubtedly brought about violations and disagreements between stakeholders. Especially the uncertified gecekondu possessors who are not determined as eligible stakeholders have been subjected to forced and arbitrary evictions. This study aims to clarify the problem of eligibility of uncertified gecekondu possessors in urban transformation and attempts to determine the criteria for the eligibility of this particular group. It argues that since the claims of uncertified gecekondu possessors like right to adequate housing, labor and possession have moral characters which do not depend upon legal acts, they can not be criteria of eligibility. The legal property ownership must be the criteria of eligibility in urban transformation practices in the law. On the other hand, this study urges that no matter living in a legal or illegal housing, the vulnerable families who lack of basic economic security and living in the project area must be determined as eligible stakeholders. In the first part of this master study, the problem of eligibility was discussed from theoretical perspective. In the second part, this problem was discussed in the case of Dikmen Valley 4th and 5th phases Urban Transformation Project. The knowledge obtained from the case can be useful for the local governments to develop sustainable policies on this particular problem.