Development of urban hierarchies at the country and regional levels in Turkey

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the hierarchical distribution of different city size groups at the country and regional level between 1945 and 2015 in Turkey. During this period, previous studies have illustrated that human mobility played an important role for the physical and socio-economic transformation of cities and regions. At the country level, first, while the growth rate of the number of smaller cities was higher than the others, the growth rate of population was the highest in the large cities. However, later, despite the population increase, the number of small cities was decreased due to transformation of economy from rural to industrial. During the post-modern era, globalization contributed even further the growth of large cities. As a result, hierarchical distribution of different size cities according to regions reveals the wide gap with respect to urbanization between the East and the West of the country. While the metropolitan cities are over urbanized in the urban hierarchy due to globalization, some of the regions in the East do not have large cities due to lack of economic development and higher out-migration rate. Mobility of capital and the people from the East to the West do not allow the full-fledged development of the urban hierarchy in the Black Sea and the East Anatolia Regions. This results in shortage of jobs and thus it becomes a vicious cycle for underdevelopment.

Fractality and Lacunarity of Turkish Cities

“…In this distribution, it has been found that the physical and economic development levels of Cluster 1, Cluster 7 and Cluster 9 cities where fractal values are measured above the average are generally better. Socio-economic findings in the article "Development of urban hierarchies at the country and regional levels in Turkey" published by Kaya and Dökmeci (2017) also support this hypothesis. • The exception of a mega-city like Izmir with its low fractal dimension and high lacunarity coefficient is due to the sprawl of the urban pattern.…”

A Rank-Size Rule Analysis of The City System at The Country and Province Level in Turkey

“…In their comprehensive study on the distribution of cities in Turkey, Deliktaş et al (2013) found that the location of a city has a positive impact on migration and agglomeration of services as well as specialization in manufacturing industry. Kaya and Dökmeci (2017) showed that due to economic constraints and higher emigration rates, the hierarchical distribution of cities differentiates in the Eastern and Western parts of Turkey.…”