Dergi makalesi Açık Erişim

How Istanbul could be at the top in global city indices?

2016    Eren, Fatih

Today there is a significant competition among the global cities. Each global city tries to preclude its competitors by way of making strategic movements. Global cities are compared in global indices that are regularly published and organized by worldwide known foundations, and on international scale, each city is ordered in accordance with a certain ranking. Directors of global cities greatly consider these orderings; primary aims and practices should be determined in accordance with the goal of being at the top in these indices. Istanbul, which is one of the famous global cities having long-standing background, has got involved in this competition as well. This study aims to evaluate the performance of Istanbul through the indices of global cities and to appoint the positive and negative aspects of it. In the research, the measurement criteria of the most 10 popular indices of global cities including Istanbul has been examined in detail with regards to using data set and results. The study suggest that Istanbul is quite competitive city and draws away its competitors in the matters of global accessibility, growth rate, commercial activity and vitality, attracting foreign investment, real estate investment, attracting the control centres of industrial firms and servicers. It has been established that Istanbul has covered a distance in topics of research sufficiency, information and communication technology, research and development, and hosting the head offices of global firms, but the city needs to make more improvements in these matters. In addition, the way of being in a better position of global cities indices for Istanbul depends on important improvement and structural reforms to be executed in the matters of environment, energy consumption, producing green energy-saving building, environmental management, green action planning and public participation. Findings are guide to the decision makers in the matters that should be taken further consideration in the process of management and planning, and in what way cities should make improvement in order not to fall behind the competition.