Examining the Street Patterns in Izmir in the 19th Century: A network based spatial analysis

Izmir, or the Greek Smyrna, had been the largest seaport on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, since the ancient times. It has experienced a notable growth, after the devastating earthquake in 1686 and has become one of the most important ports of the Eastern Mediterranean starting from the eighteenth century. There is an extensive literature on the past social and economic life of the City of Izmir, Turkey. However, the historic spatial analysis of the city is largely neglected, similar to the most studies on Asian cities. The graph theory is used to compare the spatial structure of street networks in the quarters (neighborhoods) of Izmir in the 19th century. Six different indices are used: (1) edge density, (2) edge sinuosity, (3) eta index, (4) node density, (5) order of a node, and (6) beta index. The results showed that the urban street pattern varies with the cultural landscape. The findings regarding that that the Armenian, Frank and Greek quarters do not differ significantly in the means for the three local indices, and the Turkish quarter and the Jewish quarter differ from these three quarters and from each other, point out that religion may have determining role in forming the spatial structure. Further research may consider different spatial indices and may focus on a wider time spectrum to generalize these results.