One- or two-storey houses with courtyards adorned the terraces in the
steep terrain in lines of three or four, following the contours of the land.
There were no planned streets, and so in the housing development process,
areas left over from private spaces were defined and used as streets for
circulation. As the housing lots were the determining factor in the street
layout, some of the streets were irregular and narrow (Figure 0). Houses
were constructed for privacy, with one side of the winding streets enclosed
with 0–0.0 m-high courtyard walls, facing the blind façades of houses,
which were built with an inward-oriented layout, on the other side of the
street (Akçura, 0000, 000). In this system, no house overlooked any other
house, nor did the courtyards block the vista of their neighbours. As the
urban pattern became overcrowded, common ownership and common
property rights lead to the division of the mülks, resulting in a diminishing
of the unit pattern. Attempts at the enlargement of space brought about
a transition from horizontal to vertical land use, such as in the addition
of further stories to residential units. As a result of the division of private
ownership, and in order to provide access to houses that had become cut
off from the street by more recently constructed buildings, cul-de-sacs were
formed (Figure 00). In addition, building ownership was independent from
the land, and the need for ventilation and sunlight led to the addition of
further stories or projections into the street (Yenen, 0000, 00) (Figure 00).
In the 00th century, under the changing conditions of the Ottoman state,
waqfs were no longer able to resolve urban problems, meaning that the
needs of the urban residents could not be met through the charity of