How urban growth influences the spatial characteristics of cities: empirical research in Malatya/Türkiye based on space syntax

Urbanization is increasing rapidly because of the economic, cultural, natural, political, etc. factors on a local or global scale. Therefore, this rapid growth in urbanization creates many challenges for local governments and policymakers. It is particularly important for local authorities to know how to manage, develop and design cities well in order to have more active and better cities. This study argues that a good survey for a city's existing urban areas will influence the development of planned urban areas. In this direction, primarily, the existing spatial characteristics of the study area were revealed through the current map showing the current situation. In the next section, the settlement plan is used as a base and its future spatial characteristics are determined. The current situation and the spatial characteristics which are obtained in settlement plan were compared in the last part of the study, in order to determine the spatial characteristics of the study field, integration, choice and connectivity analyses, which are the basic analyses of the Space syntax method, were performed and accessibility, readability levels were discussed in different radii by using these analyses. It is concluded that the current map shows the highest values with R3000 half-diameter 0.19 and settlement plan with 0.46 in R1000 radius. When examined in terms of readability values, it was found out that the highest values were obtained in the settlement plan with a radius of 0.73 in the R1000 radius and with a value of 0.87 on the current map. Consequently, the readability and accessibility values of the study area in the future have decreased in general.