Morphology of the urban organism in Cyprus. The effect of borders and political changes in the fringe belts of Girne, TRNC

The contemporary city is developing nowadays as an unplanned organism, sometimes inside and sometimes outside the limits of administrative territorial entities, so it does happen quite often that the urban organism goes out of the control of the local town-planning authority. Nevertheless the city limits, within the formation process of urban tissues, develop through time changing status from dividing limits to centralizing areas (Caniggia and Maffei, 1979), (Strappa, 1995). The notion of “fringe belt”, as developed by M.R.G. Conzen and the school of urban morphology of the University of Birmingham (Conzen, 1960), (Whitehand and Morton, 2004), describes coherently the change of status of these areas. This paper analyses the formation and change of fringe belts in the city of Girne, TRNC (Kyrenia, Cyprus). The case study of Girne, TRNC, as developed after 1974, is an interesting example of abrupt change in the urban growth pattern within a different State and local authority, a change usually enhancing the open fringe belt formation, as happens in most metropolitan areas, determining a scattered and unplanned urban growth. The post 1974 changes of Kyrenia’s fringe belts will contribute to the further comprehension of urban policies used in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus after the division of the island following the Turkish military occupation in 1974. The Girne (Kyrenia) case study will be very useful for the discussion and the comparative analysis of the post-1974 urban growth in Cyprus, (Charalambous and Hadjichristos, 2011). The case study will also, following the latest trends of the research in urban morphology (Gu and Xu 2014), describe the different land-use policies, the property issues, the contemporary urban planning policies and the possible future urban design strategies in Cyprus.