Kayseri is a great city in the geographical center of Turkey. It has not suffered an uncontrollable surge of rural workers like many Turkis cities have and therefore is not surrounded by a thick ring of gecekondus. In Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara the illegally constructed and usually disordered gecekondus were the general form of urban expansion for decades, leading to poor urban planning (sewerage, powerlines, schools, hospitals, etc. take a long time to come and are difficult to build) and transportation issues (difficult to incorporate into transportation infrastructure), along with health problems and safety concerns of buildings that never attempted to conform to building codes. In comparison, a city like Kayseri is a breath of fresh air.
Mt Erciyes looks wonderful in the background. Furthermore, though most buildings in Kayseri are run of the mill, cookie-cutter highrises indistinguishable from the thousands upon thousands that have risen in Turkey, it has some wonderful, though, short buildings downtown, like the city museum. It shows that the legacy of Mimar Sinan is not wasted or forgotten. Not too bad for the home of bastirma.
a wonderful picture. |