An Approach for the Evaluation of the Spatial Quality of Urban Waterfronts: The Case of Istanbul

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, urban waterfronts have been developing worldwide. While the waterfronts transformed into new urban areas, the open spaces constituted a large part of that environment for recreational, social, and cultural purposes. Unlike others, urban spaces located on the waterfronts are distinctive, with their location being adjacent to the water. So, the level of integration with the water comes first for these open spaces. This article focuses on urban spaces on the waterfronts and aims to demonstrate a tool for the evaluation of their spatial quality. Also, the results of a spatial analysis of Istanbul’s waterfronts on the urban scale are going to be discussed where the tool is utilized to make the analysis by conducting Geographical Information System (GIS) for objective criteria and expert views for subjective variables. The spatial data is appraised through a scoring system based on five parameters and ranking among different waterfronts is based on the scores attained according to the data analysis that evaluates the spatial quality. The results show that even though the spatial quality of open spaces on Istanbul’s waterfronts is weak, the Historical Waterfronts stand out with higher values. Furthermore, the evaluation tool that is going to be introduced in this research might be utilized as a guide for prospective planning and urban design works for the open spaces of waterfront cities. Also, the systematic arrangement of prioritized parameters as a model is going to contribute to the knowledge of the urban waterfronts and the evaluation method is going to contribute to the understanding of data analysis studies. Since Istanbul’s waterfronts have been developing without a holistic planning and water-based design approach, the results of this study are going to be an input for planning and design works of the city.