Rural-to-Urban Migration and Spatial Inequality:
Design-Driven Reconfiguration of Urban Fabric in Yenimahalle, Ankara
Instructors: Prof. Dipl. Ing. Christoph Wessling, Dr.-Ing. Sepideh Zarrin Ghalam I Year: August 2025 I Location: Yenimahalle, Ankara. I Program: Urban Repair and Community Production I Software: AutoCAD, QGIS, SketchUp, Rhino6, Photoshop, Illustrator, Corona Renderer
“The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is... one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” - David Harvey.
Rural-to-urban migration has been one of the demographic processes accompanying modernization and industrialization in many developing cities. The movement of population from rural areas to urban centers increases the spatial concentration of labor and economic activity, shaping the growth and structure of cities. However, the critical factor is not migration itself, but how this demographic transition is spatially accommodated through property relations, parcel structures, and settlement practices.
The Mehmet Akif-Demetevler-Demetlale-Demetgül transitional zone in Yenimahalle, Ankara illustrates the spatial outcomes of this process. Informal settlements have gradually acquired legal status and been replaced by apartment blocks; yet this formalization did not produce a corresponding improvement in spatial continuity or public space structure. This condition is described in the study as “Legal Status ≠ Spatial Quality,” indicating a post-formal urban situation in which legal transformation does not automatically generate spatial quality.
From a structural perspective, this condition can be interpreted through the base–superstructure relationship. While the legal and planning framework (superstructure) has changed through formalization, the underlying spatial logic shaped by property patterns, parcel subdivision, and incremental development (base) has remained fragmented. The project analyzes these conditions through morphological change, public space continuity, and socio-spatial accessibility, and proposes spatial strategies that reconnect fragmented urban elements through strengthened public interfaces, productive landscapes, and neighborhood-scale social infrastructure.
The diagrams position the study area within a longer trajectory of urban transformation, linking national development policies with the gradual spatial restructuring of Yenimahalle. They show how successive planning regimes, housing production models, and land practices reshaped the neighborhood’s morphology from socially embedded horizontal fabrics to standardized vertical housing blocks. In this sense, the current spatial fragmentation of the Mehmet Akif-Demetevler-Demetlale-Demetgül transition zone appears not as an isolated condition but as the accumulated spatial outcome of layered structural transformations.
The diagrams show the spatial context of the project area at different scales. The first map locates Yenimahalle within the metropolitan structure of Ankara, while the second identifies the project area within the district. The third diagram illustrates the spatial relationship between the project site and the city center.
Together, these diagrams explain how the project area functions as a transition zone within the urban structure of Ankara. The site is located between different urban fabrics and development patterns that emerged during different periods of the city’s expansion. Understanding this spatial position is essential for interpreting the morphological differences visible in the area and for defining the design approach of the project.
“First life, then spaces, then buildings - the other way around never works.” - Jan Gehl
