Property and Planning Discipline

Location decision and standards of shopping malls keep relevancy at a
standstill position in the planning agenda of Turkey when considered the
increasing numbers of construction even though the economic crisis in the
World. By the end of June 2014, the number of shopping malls has reached
to 412 (including under construction) and the total gross leasable area to
10.8 million m2 (AARREC, 2015). While there are many regulations and
planning legislative frameworks related to the classification and standards
of shopping malls around the world, such development has just began to
form in Turkey. Although some regulations for planning the retail spaces
have existed since the 1960s, many of them lacked both international
standards and a national classification schema that fits for Turkey’s unique
market demands.
This research attempts to fulfill a part in understanding the historical
journey of shopping malls in Turkey with reference to the cases of Europe,
Asia and America. The literature review aims to explore the variations
in standards and classification schemas among different geographies
in time. Based on the literature review, secondly, the research aims to
shed light on the current legislative framework in Turkey with regard
to planning, design and classification of shopping malls. To this end;
three laws and seven regulations have been analyzed through a set of
six parameters derived from literature review. These parameters are:
definitions and standards, location decisions, protection of ecological
environment, transportation and parking, hierarchy between the plans
and legend categories of plans. Results indicate that recent legislative
framework of Turkey cannot fully address a unique, sustainable and
national classification schema for shopping malls. The framework also
fail in defining the location decision parameters. Whilst, the new law for
shopping malls attempts to regulate and address the need for parking lots
comprehensively. On the other hand the same law neglects the hierarchy of
plans and needs to be improved.

The rapid development of shopping centers in Istanbul has a different historical pattern than those in USA or Europe both in terms of “construction year” and “location decision criteria” where all root from urban and economic dynamics of Turkey.The objective of this research is to evaluate the spatial characteristics of shopping centers in Istanbul through time enabled web maps of ESRI. Out of 110 shopping malls, urban dynamics of 80 are mapped interactively using “story maps”.

A majority of literature in walkability analysis focus on straight-line calculations. However with the use of walkability raster surfaces through network distance buffers, more realistic measures can be achieved. This paper aims to develop a walkability index for 110 shopping malls in Istanbul through incorporating a direct measure of street connectivity. The results reveal low, medium, high and exceptionally high levels of walkability surfaces for the shopping malls in Istanbul.

To date, quantitative analysis on the depth of mortgage markets across a broad set of countries has been very limited. This paper uses a rich and balanced data set on 31 European countries to investigate the crosscountry variations in the depth of mortgage markets during the period 2005–2012. The present paper might be accepted as the updated and enriched version of existing research for the European region in terms of the coverage of countries, historical data and the empirical analyses. Our empirical findings reveal that developed countries have sizeable residential mortgage markets and this is mainly associated with higher urbanization rates and stronger legal rights. One of the most notable results of this study is that, statistical significance of explanatory variables in modeling the depth of the mortgage markets depends heavily on both the variables, countries (regions) included in the models and the regression methodology used. Hence, we argue that strong conclusions based on such analyses should be avoided and the findings of previous research on the variations of the depth of mortgage markets should be carefully evaluated.

ABSTRACT From Conclusion: "The multiple use of outback landscapes raises a diverse array of sustainability issues related to property rights, property access, and roles and responsibilities associated with land use. This paper proposes a qualitative and a quantitative approach for investigating the impacts of property rights on landscape use and management, welfare changes and distributional implications that changes to property rights might generate."

We identify the 10 major terrestrial and marine ecosystems in Australia most vulnerable to tipping points, in which modest environmental changes can cause disproportionately large changes in ecosystem properties. To accomplish this we independently surveyed the coauthors of this paper to produce a list of candidate ecosystems, and then refined this list during a 2-day workshop. The list includes (1) elevationally restricted mountain ecosystems, (2) tropical savannas, (3) coastal floodplains and wetlands, (4) coral reefs, (5) drier rainforests, (6) wetlands and floodplains in the Murray-Darling Basin, (7) the Mediterranean ecosystems of southwestern Australia, (8) offshore islands, (9) temperate eucalypt forests, and (10) salt marshes and mangroves. Some of these ecosystems are vulnerable to widespread phase-changes that could fundamentally alter ecosystem properties such as habitat structure, species composition, fire regimes, or carbon storage. Others appear susceptible to major changes across only part of their geographic range, whereas yet others are susceptible to a large-scale decline of key biotic components, such as small mammals or stream-dwelling amphibians. For each ecosystem we consider the intrinsic features and external drivers that render it susceptible to tipping points, and identify subtypes of the ecosystem that we deem to be especially vulnerable.