The role of landowners in the transformation of land affected by the metropolitan city, “Corlu”

This study develops a theoretical framework for exploring the growth patterns and forms that cities bordering on metropolitan cities take. The ‘leapfrog’ growth patterns of cities that are neighbours to metropolitan areas will be investigated through a case study focusing on the role of landowners’ behaviour. This framework is based on the neo-classical theories of the urban land market (Location and Land Use, Toward a General Theory of Land Rent, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1964; Cities and Housing the Spatial Pattern of Urban Residential Land Use, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1969; J. Urban Econom. 10 (1981) 201) and some models of the urban-fringe land market. This work contributes to this literature by modifying several assumptions of these models in such a way as to engender a decentralised city form shaped by landowners’ behaviour. The theoretical framework of the model will be used to investigate the growth pattern and the land transformation process of a neighbourhood city (Corlu), and the ways in which these are affected by the metropolitan city of Istanbul.