Eastside vs. Westside in Istanbul

Eastside vs. Westside in Istanbul

(You can visit the interactive map here: https://lnkd.in/dMAGebpm)

Take the 90s Eastside-Westside battles to the Bosphorus and what you get is a good beat. I aggregated the raw survey data from IMM’s Data-Driven Governance Model (VDYM) study at the neighborhood level. To reduce noise in neighborhoods with small samples, each neighborhood is represented together with its 7 nearest neighbors (KNN=7). The rationale is Tobler’s first law of geography: “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things” This keeps most of the spatial resolution intact.

The maps color neighborhoods by 10% percentiles, so they show distribution and concentration rather than absolute values. The figures below show the typical neighborhood (median) on a 0–100 scale, always in the order Westside / Istanbul / Eastside.

[Space and population]

Number of rooms: 3.18 / 3.28 / 3.41 The map looks dramatic, but the difference is only a quarter of a room.

University students: 1.8 / 11.1 / 20.1 The Anatolian coastline lead by a wide margin. The European side’s distribution is highly skewed.

Construction sector workers: 1.5 / 2.1 / 3.4 Concentrated in the East’s periphery: Sultanbeyli, Sancaktepe, Pendik, Tuzla.

[Living conditions]

At least one chronic health issue: 11.1 / 11.9 / 14.2 This most likely doesn’t mean the East is sicker, but older.

Cultural/leisure activities: 19.1 / 23.4 / 50.9 The coastal strip from Kadıköy to Kartal uses the city the most.

Resting at home on weekends: 82.3 / 80.0 / 77.0 This is the weakest contrast. Still it tells a story: the side that stays home less goes out more.

[Problems with the city]

Transportation as a problem: 76.0 / 71.5 / 62.3 Living in the middle of the traffic seems to sharpen the perception.

Unplanned development as a problem: 15.8 / 12.7 / 9.0 The builders live in the East, the complaints come from the West.

[Perceived environment and safety]

General neighborhood incidents: 28.0 / 24.6 / 16.5 The Esenyurt–Küçükçekmece–Bağcılar belt shows the same red on this map as on the safety map.

Feeling safe on the street at night: 50.0 / 53.2 / 58.7 The Anatolian side leads, but the low-safety pocket around Sancaktepe is a reminder that a side’s average doesn’t tell the whole story.

There are real differences between the two sides. But the real story is within them. Kadıköy and Sultanbeyli, Beşiktaş and Esenyurt are entirely different cities under the same “side” label.