Weather Today- in Your Vicinity

[Birma]

Hi Yildiz - great to know you are back home safely. Very nice to see your road shots as always and as the Doc says, easy to live with the reflections when the views are interesting .

[aster]

Hi Yildiz - great to know you are back home safely. Very nice to see your road shots as always and as the Doc says, easy to live with the reflections when the views are interesting .

Thanks a lot, Birma. : )

Yildiz

[Greg Beetham]

Welcome back Yildiz, good to see you got back safe, you better check and see if the Roses need watering. I liked the views from the coach, interesting. Is that new footy stadium the round ball variety? It wouldn't be Rugby surely. And yep I agree, highrise are on the march across the globe, a horrible existance, no birds, no flowers, no trees, no yard too mow....hmmm hang on a sec...
Greg

Townsville weather: 23.1 | 27.3C, H63%, 22|28km/h ESE|ENE Fine-ish.

I found a couple of bus trips but there wasn't much of interest.

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[aster]

Welcome back Yildiz, good to see you got back safe, you better check and see if the Roses need watering. I liked the views from the coach, interesting. Is that new footy stadium the round ball variety? It wouldn't be Rugby surely. And yep I agree, highrise are on the march across the globe, a horrible existance, no birds, no flowers, no trees, no yard too mow....hmmm hang on a sec...
Greg

Townsville weather: 23.1 | 27.3C, H63%, 22|28km/h ESE|ENE Fine-ish.

I found a couple of bus trips but there wasn't much of interest.

Thank you, Greg. Good to be back safely!

The day I arrived and yesterday, it was pouring rain showers in Istanbul. I would say that the roses are well-watered by mother nature herself.
The stadium is for one of our most prominent football (soccer) teams, Galatasaray. : ) I can't say that either Europe or Turkey has any major rugby leagues that would enforce the construction of giant venues like this one... Rugby is still rather small in Turkey but youth find it interesting already.

About mowing that lawn, now don't you exchange the scent of good, freshly-mowed grass with that of gas smells and pollution, Greg! : )) Just remember that, you're in fact living on billion-dollar piece of property...there're somethings no money can buy!

I lke your first shot very much with the vividly-coloured locomotive. : ) And the traffic is in full swing in the second. Good shots that give a good impression of how life runs around your district.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

[Greg Beetham]

Thanks Yildiz, no I was just kidding about the mowing ha ha, I actually don't mind mowing strange as it may seem, like you say it's the smell of the grass I think. That funny little Loco is actually a sugarcane Loco and they can pull a surprising number of bins. The sugarmills have their own private railway line running all over the district and you really have too watch out for them in the harvesting/crushing season...despite the flashing light train signals there are usually a couple of accidents each year as a result of car drivers not paying attention. Both scenes are down near Proserpine actually, it was a bus trip to the Whitsundays, Daydream Is. resort in particular I think it was that year, the bus delivered us to the shuttle boat in Airlie beach for the trip out to the resort.
Greg

[Birma]

Interestingly, the architects and town planners in the UK in the 60s thought that tower blocks would provide more green areas. The tower blocks were meant to replace areas of (poor) terraced, back to back housing where there were no gardens etc. The tower block design provided high density, cheap housing, while also allowing for parks and green spaces around the blocks. As we all know, the idealistic plans didn't normally come to fruition, and many of the early blocks have been demolished and replaced with more traditional housing. In the same vein, I saw the idea of vertical gardening on TV last week http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/design/p ... rden.shtml. Just Google "vertical garden" - if you have to have high rise building then it can look very attractive.

[aster]

Interestingly, the architects and town planners in the UK in the 60s thought that tower blocks would provide more green areas. The tower blocks were meant to replace areas of (poor) terraced, back to back housing where there were no gardens etc. The tower block design provided high density, cheap housing, while also allowing for parks and green spaces around the blocks. As we all know, the idealistic plans didn't normally come to fruition, and many of the early blocks have been demolished and replaced with more traditional housing. In the same vein, I saw the idea of vertical gardening on TV last week http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/design/p ... rden.shtml. Just Google "vertical garden" - if you have to have high rise building then it can look very attractive.

Hi Birma, : )

Architecture and most importantly, good, efficient, self-sustaining architecture is one of my main interests, therefore, I'm familiar with the good examples of 'true green architecture' and vertical gardens where there's limited garden area within town districts. Any type of bold concrete structure has an ill impact on our natural habitats and climates, hence warming the atmosphere and punisihing us with more global warming.

One good example to vertical gardens is the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris which is a rather new structure. (photo below)

Unfortunately, in Turkey, corruption inside the govermential departments that organize the tenders and the bids is enormous. The same applies to many of the contractors and their related constructions. They abuse the beautiful landscapes and forests of Turkey unashamedly.
The goverment and the municipalities are so corrupted that, they are slow in responding to public anger and complaints or are bribed by the contractors to back them up in case of a law suite...I've seen it all happen, therefore I know. They are so greedy, so money-prone that they are not ashamed to fill our beautiful hills and valleys with identical, monsterous concrete blocks. Many architects and contractors are just mediocre-mentality people who only are interested in the money. They have no idea of what's good for human-kind and don't care when you take the time to say so. They are way behind modern mentality that puts all human life before everything.

I will post 6 examples of land abuse with no sign of regard for 'green' or suitability for land type in my next two posts. All taken during my road trip in the past weeks.

Yildiz

Musée du Quai Branly
Photo from the related website:

[aster]

The 'product' of ill-functioning administrations...

Here are ruined hillsides by massive repetitive ugly buildings and treeless zones that are in the middle of beautiful smooth lands. Unbelievably so, there's hardly any space for 'breathing' space between the structures.
This is the 21 st Century and here's evidence that 'human mentality' shows no signs of improvement or respect for its surroundings... be it nature or human life or any other form of life for that matter.

Places near Izmit.

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[aster]

There're a lot of weird-looking pretentious structures that have long been abandoned by contemporary architects who work for prestigeous circles in the world and who also are working on better architectural solutions that support natural life and the climate....But architects and contractors here in Turkey are merely copy / pasting what was abandoned for disfunctionalty, instead of exploring the grounds and the science for more efficient and green architecture. Laziness, greed and corruption make for a very difficult-to-heal disease....especially here!

Places closer to Istanbul...not very different from the zones in Izmit in mentality actually.

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[David Kilpatrick]

I found this baffling when we came to Scotland in the 1980s. No place had a lower population density in the entire span from Edinburgh to London, than the region we moved to. The sheer amount of empty space here remains unrivalled. Yet housing for most people has a density such that four apartments were always built into each duplex-semi - two front door, ground floor flats and two side-door, upstairs flats. Elsewhere, mini-tower blocks were built typically six stories high each with twelve flats.

Fortunately much of a earlier local authority housing of this type either has generous garden space (the 4-block houses) or is sited in green space near woodlands, riverside etc (small blocks of flats). But in the last ten years, any vacant lot in our town has immediately been filled with 4-6 stories of solid apartment block, often with a frontage of hundreds of feet - big 'insulas' with no gardens at all, and large car parks.

I'm not sure what to make of it. The population had risen by 20% in 20 years. People want to live in the centre of the town, to be close to shops and facilities. They like being able to walk and not use the car; they can get to banks, post, dentist, doctor, pubs, restaurants, accountants, lawyers, opticians, bookshops, clothing shops, markets, supermarkets and all the essentials they need.

So although I don't like the infilling of every space with high density housing, it has if anything improved the social structure of the town and increased its prosperity. But 90% of these apartments are lived in by single people or retired couples without children and this style of living suits them better.

From what I have seen in Turkey, the high rise apartments are very likely to have families with children in them. The experience of the last 50 years in Britain is that this is the mistake. It's bad enough when the children are under 10, when they are 10-20 years old (often also when the flats get to be 10-20 years old) the flats don't provide the right environment and problems start to happen.

David

[Birma]

Hi Yildiz - they certainly "pack them in" It makes me feel very lucky to live in a house with a small piece of green around it. Government corruption is immensley frustrating as the people who need to fix it are the ones perpetrating it . I think it was Billy Connolly (a Scottish Commedian) who said that the desire to run for public office should be an automatic disqualification from holding public office!

[Dr. Harout]

Getting packed like sardines...

[Greg Beetham]

Yep those photos sure make a statement alright 'stackem and rackem' I guess is the theme, I suppose governments at all levels are subject to pressure too try and provide affordable housing for a growing population with some amenities and conveniences, (with some kickbacks probably), I wonder what the actual occupancy rate is, and one wonders how earthquake proof they are, Turkey is a geologically rather active place. It seems they don't have giant carparks so they may be connected by some sort of public transport perhaps but certainly not an ideal place for families I reckon.
There's good and bad in any solution I guess with an expanding population, here most want there own patch of terra-firma, a house and garden..nice yes, but take Brisbane for example, the suburbs have gobbled up valuable and irreplaceable farmland, hundreds of square miles of it replaced with individual houses, and as ugly as those stackem and rackems are they are probably much more efficient in terms of providing services like water, sewage and electricity than a vast housing estate is with the roads everywhere throughout for at least one car per house, if not two for the inevitable commuting too and from each day.
We have problems here with miners as well, the last kerfuffel was when some giant mine wanted to dig a huge opencut in the middle of fertile farm/grazing land. Miners have no concept of how long it takes nature too build fertile land, they say it will be restored back the way it was when they are finished. I think that is very unlikely myself, after you remove the good topsoil, I doubt it will ever be put back the way it was, and it's not as if Australia is overloaded with areas that has good soil...same mentallity Yildiz, anything is ok if there is a buck in it....like drilling for oil on the Barrier Reef, that one crops up from time to time as well.
Greg

[aster]

Hi, : )

Thanks for the very insightful comments, David, Birma, Dr. Harout and Greg.

You all have observed the urban development and land-use rights and wrongs pretty profoundly as it evolved in your countries and you all arrived at some good conclusions.

The main problem with Turkey is mainly the government itself for its liability to corruption so it can get the votes of the poor people or the rich. The rich or those who became rich through the the current government of Turkey are the most harmful at the moment. The government backs any ill-minded idea as long as they get their votes...it's become a barter system of taking advantages with them all.

There's no city planning or respect to people who spent their years studying for a better urban planning and also providing quality landscapes with parks with green and utilities.

Here's a recent example of how things go here: There was a vast green land piece in the middle of Istanbul where the traffic and the infrastructure were already in trouble because of the high-densities. The urban developers wanted the land to be preserved as the oxygen-providing green area for the district much like the Central Park in New York, USA.

Instead, the government sold the land to a contractor and permitted high-density building construction. But of course for the corrupted that was not enough, meaning the contractor and governmet. They were allowed only a certain height but they forced their way with the people in the government and the prime ministery and they increased their construction area and height by 30%, increasing the density in that area even more.

This is just one example out of hundreds at the moment. We're really experiencing a period with disregard to science and people of profound thinking that do their utmost for a healthier and more qualified living environment for all.

These are big mistakes that will not do any good to the city now or in the future. Especially as we already have too many high-risers and shopping malls with offices in the same district that have vacant spaces that are of no use to any one. These structures are not the products of true planning, these were allowed so the government can find more supporters and financial gains for itself.

We're not heading in the right direction here, guys! We don't need these buildings at all. Most are sitting there empty and occupying valuable space that could have been used for better purposes like parks, sports outlets and open social areas.

The buildings in the photos above were paid for by the government, so to milk more money from the government they just pour the concrete and build the walls, get paid by the wall area and leave. These contractors don't care what happens to the soil, air quality, quality green environment, trees, children, children's playgrounds, elderly, youth, education, the ill, the disabled or the eartquakes of Turkey for that matter. They just fill the spaces with walls and fill their bank accounts and don't look back to see the disasterous habitats they are responsible for.

Turkey's government has a long way to go before it actually becomes a true government that does some quality thinking.

It's all about corruption and because of corruption that we suffer from a lack of quality urban life...very different from some good governments around the World that do explore and study and eliminate to prevent the bad before it actually happens.

We have more criminal contractors walking around freely on the streets, taking holidays at the most expensive holiday resorts, than any other country in the world, instead of isolating them behind the bars of law as all criminals are supposed to be.

You may find it hard to belive but the contractors who built the failing buildings that came crashing down during the 1999 earthquake are all free.... driving the latest model of an expensive car brand, living in luxury buildings, drinking and eating with their friends in the government...You can imagine the rest!

Yildiz

[BruceKingston]

This was the weekend and admittedly the skies are a bit bluer here today and for the next few days if you can put any store in the forecast at all. Tricky shooting conditions though because, as you can imagine, the light was changing about a zillion times a second (slight exaggeration maybe )