Cities change and are transformed over time due to economic, social and political decisions, and this process can have either a positive or a negative effect on the visual aesthetic quality of the streets and avenues. The preservation and improvement of the visual aesthetic qualities of the streets and avenues ensures the sustainability of the visual character of the city, improves the quality of life, and also encourages collective identity, a sense of belonging, and strong urban images. It is suggested that the factors affecting visual aesthetic quality should be determined in order to improve the visual aesthetic quality of streets and avenues. This study assesses the effects of the change and transformation processes occurring in Ankara - Ulus and Kızılay city centers, as well as the effects on their immediate surroundings in terms of the visual aesthetic quality of streets and avenues. Furthermore, the factors affecting the visual aesthetic quality of streets and avenues are questioned through the use of a model in which both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used comparatively with historical and current street images. The results of the study show that by comparing street images from different periods, important clues can be obtained in regard to the factors affecting the visual aesthetic quality of urban spaces.

Historic districts, which are an essential source of a society’s historical and sociocultural values, have a semantic value for urban residents. However, the cultural identity of these areas and the semantic values they offer to people are often ignored nowadays in urban design and planning studies. This study aims to reveal the desire of many people to live closer to historic districts, and to encourage local governments to be more aware of the need to conserve these urban areas due to their value as part of a local identity. As historic districts are not normally on the market, determining their semantic value is a complex process, but one that can be achieved with the Hedonic Pricing model. In this study, the effect on house prices of being close to the historic district of Ankara Castle was examined with the help of this Model. In the study, a total of 422 houses was examined, all of which were located within a radius of 1500 meters from the district of Ankara Castle, and the effect of the distance to Ankara Castle on the price of the houses was evaluated. According to the results, the desire to live close to the district was reflected in higher house prices. Houses located within a 500 meter radius of Ankara Castle are sold at an average of 34.3% more than similar houses farther away. It was also found that the price of houses decreased by 5% with each additional 100m of distance away from the district of Ankara Castle.

The new concept of poverty or urban poverty includes the disadvantaged status of people who are unable to obtain an equal share of various socio-spatial factors, particularly economic, in regards to daily life. Waste collectors are one of the main groups in the urban environment who are deprived of welfare, justice, and representation. This study aims to answer the questions of what psychosocial effects and other difficulties are faced by waste laborers, as well as how their reflections on their experiences and sense of belonging to the city has developed. The study population consists of three (3) metropolitan districts of Ankara (Altındağ, Çankaya, and Keçiören), and the sample group is comprised of seventy (70) waste workers who eke out an existence by collecting waste in these districts. The data obtained in the study and carried out in the form of face-to-face interviews, which is one of the qualitative research techniques utilised in this study, were analyzed through the use of descriptive and content analysis. The results obtained show that waste laborers experience urban poverty in their socio-spatial relations with regard to daily life. It was revealed that they were susceptible to certain spatial and psychosocial traumas, such as marginality produced by the new concept of poverty, inability to relate to urban space, exclusion and stigma. Various suggestions are made in the study to include waste laborers in the recycling sector, and so help them find solutions to the multiple disadvantages they face.

The anti-government protests that began in Syria in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring resulted in a civil war which led to over 3.6 million Syrian refugees residing in Turkey. Syrian refugees have become an important issue, both in Turkey and around the world. The main purpose of this study is to analyse the dynamics of the social exclusion of Syrian refugees in Turkey, and the tactics of resistance to this exclusion developed by the refugees. In this context, Bourdieu’s field theory and Michel de Certeau’s concepts of “strategy” and “tactics” are utilised as theoretical frameworks in the exploration of the everyday life of Syrians in the Altındağ district in Ankara, Turkey. The study adapts a qualitative research methodology, utilising face-to-face interviews with a total of thirteen Syrians living in Altındağ district in Ankara, for the expression of subjective perceptions of Syrians in everyday practices of social exclusion. The data obtained has revealed that Syrian refugees face economic, spatial, and cultural exclusion, while also experiencing hardship in accessing social services, and that these problems are closely related to one another. Morever, it was found that the refugees developed resistance practices or tactics to combat the dynamics of social exclusion.

This research investigates the relationship between social cohesion and the production of space through the socio-spatial transformations that four specific streets of Ankara’s Demirlibahçe neighborhood have been experiencing. The primary aim of focusing on these four streets, which have been appropriated by three communities (Roma, Turkmen migrants from Iraq/Telafer, and locals) is to scrutinize how the production of space in particular streets hampers possible social cohesion at the local level. These streets have seen ongoing and contentious spatial practices since the massive influx of Iraqi migrants in 2014. Thus, a second aim of the study is to investigate to what extent immigrants’ spatial practices become the basis of their sense of belonging, while in return creating differential spaces within the streets where preexisting social cohesion between the locals and Roma is reshaped. Through the use of a total of 60 in-depth and group interviews, which have been conducted using convenience and snowball sampling, the aim is to both describe, and critically engage, with relevant social cohesion studies and projects. The study presents the ongoing socio-spatial transformations within the Demirlibahçe neighborhood, through tracing three groups’ social cohesion processes in/to space and community.

Akyurt Kalaba Tumulus, which is located in the Akyurt District of Ankara was excavated by the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in 2012. During the excavation, a burial chamber, which contained the dromos, the anterior chamber and the main chamber, was discovered close to the center of the Tumulus. In addition, cremains were found in ostotheks within the cremation areas, and in an inhumation burial near the southeast slope of the Tumulus. Coins found in the graves show that the tumulus was used between the middle of the first century and the beginning of the third century. In this study, the unearthed human remains are examined and evaluated with other archaeological findings in the context of mortuary practices. It was found that there were the inhumation remains of three adults and an infant, as well as the cremains of an adult, in the burial chamber. While the cremains of an adult woman and a 9-10 year old child were identified in the ostotheks, it is understood that the inhumation grave belonged to an adult. The examination of the remains of cremation (i.e. discolorations and changes in the shape of the bones) has indicated that the corpses of the dead were cremated while flesh remained on the bones, and the pyre fire in the cremation areas reached temperatures above 700-900°C. The presence of a well-preserved burial chamber with its architectural elements, cremation areas with ostotheks, and also the presence of different burial practices, make Akyurt Kalaba Tumulus unique among its similar sites. In the study, the Tumulus was evaluated holistically by using bioarcheological and archaeological data, along more conclusive results.

Housing has become an asset within the real estate sector nowadays that is merely bought and sold within the economic system, and so has somewhat lost its original purpose as a shelter that focuses on meeting human needs. Due to the urban and housing policies that have döbeen applied throughout Turkey, housing has, in a sense, lost its value. Ankara, especially in areas that contain a significant amount of the housing stock of the pre-Republic period before 1980, has not been spared the effects of these policies. In fact, the province of Ankara has been particularly affected by the influences of modern architecture. Most of the residential buildings that were completed in this period have either been demolished or converted for commercial usage. There are several reasons for this, including changing centers, rapid population growth, migration, and zoning decisions. It can be said that the vast majority of the modern housing buildings that still survive in Ankara are mostly located in the Kızılay area and were built before 1960.
The study aims to reveal the changes that have occurred between the past and present states of three pre-1960 housing structures that are located primarily in Kızılay. According to the original projects of the selected buildings, only the ground floors were utilized for commercial purposes, but today all three are used entirely for commercial purposes. In the study, the past-present examination of the selected buildings was carried out through archive and field studies. For each building, the new arrangements made on the basis of each unit are documented, and the effects of the changes on the facade and interior spaces are detailed. As a result, not only all of the changes are identified, but also suggestions are given to provide a reference for decisions that can be taken to maintain the architectural value of the buildings.

The aim of this study is to write a comprehensive urban environmental history of Ankara in the 19th century within the contexts of the diverse contingent challenges, connectivity of challenges and spaces, and the expansion of the city. The diverse urban environmental challenges faced by Ankara were the influential and determinant factors in the processes of ensuring spatial and conceptual connectivity and the city’s expansion. The concept of “connectivity” is reproduced for both challenges and spaces. A nested, wrapped, and intertwined conceptual connectivity is established among diverse urban environmental challenges such as defense, changing circumstances, wars, immigration, fatalities, drought, famine, and external dynamics. The spatiality in the city and a complex connectivity among spaces could also be established through the situations that arise from such challenges, which have also led to the current and further expansion of the city. Spatial formations of spaces, including military barracks, planned and organic neighborhoods, graveyards, linear extensions such as roads and the railway at the periphery of the city, as well as immigrant settlements in the hinterlands, provided a spatial integrity and spatial transition between the city and its hinterlands. The contribution of this study to the literature is not only to explore the urban environmental history of Ankara, but also to reveal the city’s connectivity and expansion through the building, conceptualizing, and deciphering of diverse challenges, spatiality of sites, and the connectivity of spaces and challenges.

The increasing global importance of the service sector in recent years requires planned improvements to be made in the quality of service in transportation systems, as well as in all service sectors. Studies to determine and improve the service quality of public transportation systems are of great importance, especially in terms of how to encourage the use of public transportation, rather than private vehicles, in urban transit. In this study, the service quality of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality EGO buses was measured using the modified Servqual model, which is the result of validity and reliability analysis conducted by researchers. After applying the Servqual questionnaire, which consists of four dimensions and twenty propositions, the relationship of the data obtained was calculated in terms of socio-demographic characteristics and the quality gaps of each proposition. Results show that the passengers evaluated all dimensions negatively, and a prioritization study was subsequently carried out with the help of Quadrant analysis.

Atatürk Forestry Farm was established in 1925. Various water sources inside the farm area were established for irrigation and the needs for different facilities. For the water needs of the Marmara and Karadeniz pools within the farm, a 15 kilometer water transmission line was constructed from Kırkgöz Catchment between 1935 and 1936. The catchment area is currently located in the Alacaatlı neighbourhood of Çankaya. The water source was then assigned to the Ankara Beer Factory. In 1939, the water source became the property of TEKEL. In 2010, with the privatization of TEKEL, Kırkgöz Catchment was sold to a joint venture. Although the water source still remains, the presence of at least half of the transmission line is questionable. In this paper, historic documents and recent on-site findings related to this forgotten water source, Kırkgöz Catchment, have been compiled. In addition, an attempt is made to estimate the route of the 15 kilometer transmission line. In the conclusion, whether or not this historically important groundwater source can be considered a part of today’s Ankara is discussed.