Özet:

Silhouettes, which we call the symbolic definition of visual information for cities, reveal the city’s identity with their morphological features. Therefore, the change in the cities formed in the historical process can be observed through symbolic silhouettes. Symbolic silhouettes are the semantic definition of change for cities and are directly related to cultural evolution. Because the change in the symbolic silhouettes of cities is culture-based. The memetic theory, the theoretical definition of cultural evolution, describes the cultural knowledge transferred between people for generations. In the light of this information, it is aimed to develop a perspective on the evolutionary reflection in city silhouettes by examining the symbolic silhouettes of metropolitan cities, where we can see a matching reflection of cultural evolution. For this reason, firstly, a literature review of studies on cultural evolution, memetic theory, city silhouettes and symbolic silhouettes was conducted to create the theoretical framework of the study. In line with the information obtained because of the scans, the criteria of the memetic theory revealed by Heylighen are explained in detail. In the second stage of the research, the photographs were taken from Üsküdar, Beşiktaş-Kadıköy ferry line European and Asian side points of view, and Fındıklı-MSGSU points were analyzed with digital drawing techniques to reveal the symbolic silhouette of the city of Istanbul, which was chosen as a field study, regionally. Then, the symbolic silhouettes of the cities of Istanbul, New York, and Dubai, which have similar characteristics in terms of being metropolitan and coastal cities, were analyzed with digital drawing techniques. Thus, three cities were compared within the framework of memetic theory criteria. In this context, it has been determined that the cultural evolution and the change between the symbolic silhouettes of cities develop in parallel with each other.

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