Exploration of Urban Patterns and Relations through Computational Techniques in the Traditional Urban Tissue: Amasya Case

Abstract

This paper presents an on-going study of a hybrid method that can be used in exploration of urban patterns in an existing historic city. A city is a complex system which has many forms and structures affecting each other spontaneously. Through time, it reorganizes its parts and formation with bottom-up forces and top-down planning decisions. While designing new spaces, designers must understand the inner nature of the city in order to protect the urban history and culture by designing coherent structures with city's existing culture, social[1]economic structure as well as its architectural tissue. In this context, this paper proposes a hybrid method to investigate urban patterns and their relations by utilizing environmental and urban data in the scope of sustainable design in an existing historic city. Throughout the study various Data Mining techniques and GIS tools will be used for compiling, collecting and analyzing different sources of information from the city. For a case study, the sample city, Amasya, and the selected part of it, the Hatuniye Neighborhood will be identified. After explaining methods used in this study, the case area will be presented. In the case study, the raw urban data is provided as various data types by different government institutions and translated into GIS software. Also, Attribute Table for buildings is prepared for Data Mining software which has different clustering and frequent pattern mining tools in order to reveal hidden patterns and relationships in the neighborhood. In the final section, the results coming from Data Mining studies are interpreted in order to discuss the potentials of this hybrid method in terms of investigating urban patterns and defining their relations to each other for urban design studies embracing locality and enhancing urban memory.