No abstract

Urban development endangers agricultural and natural areas. It causes the rural population to immigrate to urban areas due to appealing life standards and leads to the extinction of rural areas. In addition, reduced rural population causes urban areas to select rural areas as development areas. This problem of rural areas can be better described in the areas that have completed their urban development but still continue to develop. This article discusses the effect of population in determining the areas which see population increases and are under pressure. We addressed Amasya in our research. The population in the neighbourhoods of Amasya was determined. The distribution of rural areas in the city plans in the neighbourhoods was determined. Geographical information system was used for these analyses. Pearson's product-moment correlation was used on agricultural and population data obtained from the neighbourhoods. The existence of a negative or positive interaction between population and agricultural areas was shown. This study described the problems of rural areas located in urban areas and indicated their status according to the population, using statistical analysis.

Urban historic areas are threatened by a multifaceted problem of physical, social, functional, and economic degradation. Moreover, changing hands of urban historic areas often results in the loss of interest to protect the historic sites. As a result, the accumulated memories between the owners and the spatial structure begin to disappear. In this sense, the ownership of historic buildings becomes important. To illustrate this, an Anatolian town with historic sites, Tokat, was selected. In this paper land property-led urban conservation (LPLUC) was improved with the buffer zones method (BZM). Information technology was used in order to create the buffer zones. BZM helps to calculate covered areas and their quality, and also to compute the quality of buildings with their covered areas, which are tabulated in each buffer zone. The buffer zones were created with GIS and the data of the urban historic sites were computed with GIS. This paper emphasizes, in the context of urban conservation land, the property-led conservation approach, the importance of using GIS in urban conservation processes and the impact of BZM in relation to the historic sites and the conservation plan of Tokat.

This study measured the distance from its sample location to green areas in Tokat, Turkey, using the buffer zone method. This study evaluated the decisions of the Purposeful Tokat Conservation Framework Development Plan and the decisions outside of the Historical Urban Protected Areas Development Plan together as whole. Creating green areas that are at an accessible distance in urban planning projects is important. Accordingly, the accessibility of green areas was measured using the buffer zone method. This study also proposes a method in regard to accessibility to green areas in Turkey. The analysis performed in Tokat found that the green areas were not planned considering accessibility criteria. The results of this study indicate that settlements with houses and green areas should be planned proportionally and at a more accessible distance to each other.

In this study, existing and future land use patterns were examined in the development plan for Amasya using hierarchical cluster analysis. To this end, the area encompassed by the Amasya development plan was partitioned into grids to examine their proximities and similarities to each other in terms of land use. In addition, linkages among the grids were investigated with respect to the land use patterns. Linkages among land use functions were determined in this research through cluster analysis. After exposing the similarities among the grids, the shortcomings with regard to the necessary social infrastructure within the grids were identified, and the requirements of similar urban development approaches to grids with similar characteristics were described. This paper emphasizes the need for healthy, sustainable development and a planned and balanced distribution of social infrastructure in urban development plans.