Phd Degree / Doktora

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Residual Spaces of the Informal Empire: Rereading Smyrna as an Incomplete Colonial Project
(01. Izmir Institute of Technology, 2023) Sheridan, Işılay Tiarnagh; Erten, Erdem
Smyrna (İzmir) has always been a busy and privileged trade node with its fertile Western Anatolian hinterland and naturally-protected harbour. During the 19th century, however, the city experienced an unprecedented trade boom and urban expansion mainly due to foreign industrial initiatives, modernisation projects, and its increasing importance in Mediterranean trade. Its port surpassed the size of Constantinople's port, the Ottoman capital city, and Smyrna became an arena of commercial competition, especially attracting Britain and France. As the leading imperial power and world economic centre of the 19th century, Britain was the first to establish railways connecting Smyrna's harbour to the hinterland as a modernisation project. British entrepreneurs bought 1/3 of Western Anatolian territory and ultimately controlled half of the port's trade volume. Although the economic history of this shift towards semi-colonisation has interested many scholars, how its clandestine colonial makeup left traces on the city remains to be studied. Regarding post-industrial revolution port city development, Smyrna was an odd example since after the Tanzimat Reforms', the modernisation strategies of different foreign investors, including the British, left a fragmented assemblage of urban spaces behind. The strange likeness of this assemblage to certain British colonial port cities rather than to port city models is worth exploring as new archival evidence shows that Smyrna was an incomplete imperial project formed in 'British imagination'. This thesis aims to reveal how this informal empire embedded in modernisation acts was actualised, through morphological analysis combined with memoires, diaries and correspondances as the founding narratives of residual semi-colonial urban space.
Effect of Urban Geometry on Pedestrian Level Wind Velocity
(İzmir Institute of Technology, 2011) Çelik, Çelen Ayşe; Yücel, Şebnem
In the recent years there are many studies on the detection of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect which shows itself mostly by the temperature difference between rural and urban areas. The heat generation in the city, the radiant energy balance, the air flow direction and intensity are the main factors affecting the UHI. Height and shape of the buildings, the street width and orientation, the space between the buildings and the urban topography and vegetation are the main elements of the urban geometry. The air velocity is either increased or decreased by building blocks and the solar energy is trapped in the urban canyons formed by buildings on both sides of the streets. Pedestrian comfort level is greatly affected by the temperature, the relative humidity and the wind speed in urban canyons. The city of Izmir has been experiencing very hot summers especially in the recent years due to the UHI effect and the global warming. The compact organization of the streets in the mild climate of Izmir during the winter protects pedestrians and building façades from cold winds. However the prevailing wind and the local breeze in the summer season on the coastal region in Izmir are blocked by the buildings as well, causing discomfort during the hot summer days. Although this is a well known problem in Izmir, there are very few scientific studies on the subject to bring it above a speculative level. The aim of this study is to fill this gap as much as possible and find a way to create guidelines for planners and architects for future plans or physical organisation of the city and making strategies for better urban environment and comfort conditions for the citizens of Izmir.

Phd Degree / Doktora

Browse

Filters

Settings

Sort By

Results per page

Search Results