Spatial distribution of construction firms in Istanbul

Abstract

In the restructuring of the cities today, economic growth and its reflective trend multicentred, urban development pattern made business enterprises shifted its locational choice in a decentralized way. As the focus of this paper, construction firms expended their market areas as well. The present study investigates the spatial distribution of construction firms according to the variables of socio-economic characteristics of districts and total construction sizes within the concept of multi-centre development in Istanbul. The paper describes the growth of the city and the construction firms through time according to the concentric zones and districts, firstly. Then descriptive figures and results of regression analysis are given by taking the number of construction firms as dependent variable and population, income per capita, average household size and amount of construction activity as the independent variables. Main hypothesis of this paper is that socio-economic indicators and total size of construction in building permits can explain the variance of number of construction firms in Istanbul district. Overall results from the multiple regression model indicate that the role of socio-economic indicators and total size of construction in building permits on the distribution of construction firms is proved on a large scale in the study. The spatial distribution of the construction firms has been figured out that the subcentral, peripheral districts of Istanbul have sustained the significant role in a way that responds to the construction supply, and housing sub-markets. However, the intense construction trends in the periphery reveal a fact that these firms preserve the location of their management offices in the sub-centre with relatively higher economic attraction, in central districts.