The Evaluation of Land Use Changes in the Area between Buyukcekmece and Kucukcekmece Lakes: An Urban Planning Approach

Istanbul is the biggest metropolitan city of Turkey with its own population which became double size by last two decades. Also, here is most attractive center for the people who live in different places of Turkey depend on the economical opportunities and daily life standards. Today, Istanbul has over 12 million residents; there are lots of planned housing, real estates, industrial, commercial and recreational area besides unplanned ones. There were many constructional areas growing in different places and in the same time everywhere of Istanbul without systematic control during last two decades. Those unplanned area causes of such problems like infrastructure, environmental pollution, effect on the ecological balance, low neighbourhood quality in short and long time period. The area between Buyukcekmece and Kucukcekmece lakes is one of the examples of this situation. There are lots of area include residential and industrial buildings together. Some of agricultural territory demolished for houses or factories, and also existing agricultural areas were slided from south to the north during last 50 years. The study area classified as its existing usage for this study, there are 6 general land use type all over the area. Then, this land use types observed by using 1963 and 1996 different aerial photos and two different satellite images which have taken 1987 and 2004. The changing between the years was evaluated by the geographical criterias. At the end of the study, there will be some suggest and solution for the present situations to the decision makers.