Galata – the urban form in the comparative analysis of maps of two periods

This article examines how planning interventions implemented in Galata after the 1950s transformed street–urban block relationships, using the spatially directive effects of the wall system as an analytical framework. While the study is conceptually informed by the historico-geographical approach, it does not present a conventional historical geography application nor a normative urban plan analysis. Instead, it adopts a cartography-based place-reading framework, conducting a comparative analysis of the 1944 Topographical and Archaeological Plan of Galata and the current 2024 digital plan. The primary analytical scale of the study is the street and urban block. The findings reveal that in the 1944 urban fabric, street–block relationships exhibited strong morphological continuity shaped by the persistent spatial influence of topography and the wall system. In contrast, transport-oriented planning decisions, road widenings and coastal rearrangements disrupted this relational structure, producing diverse morphogenetic patterns such as fragmentation, selective transformation and spatial resistance. Through the case of Galata, the study argues that urban transformation in historic port cities should be interpreted not through a singular narrative, but through spatially differentiated morphogenetic processes.