The impacts of prestige projects on the skyline of Istanbul

Abstract

The concept of prestige projects for cities is related to governments' politics and visions. Under the effects of globalization, central and local authorities have constructedcompetitive cities. But these cities also have important historical qualities hence theseprocesses have to be made by a holistic planning vision and conservation strategy. Forinstance, if a city waterfront skyline has a strong image; new constructions should bedesigned in harmony with the local topography and urban pattern. This paper is based onmathematical and computer based approaches for evaluating aesthetic qualities of cityskylines. Therefore a case study on high rise buildings in the main prestige CBD ofIstanbul is done. GIS models of Maslak-Zincirlikuyu axis is made and its past, presentand future skylines are extracted by database querying and visual analysis. The skylinesderived are finally measured by entropy analyses based on formal aestheticcharacteristics. © 2013 Archnet-IJAR, International Journal of Architectural Research.