Evaluation of Modern Shopping Centers Inside the Urban Texture in Terms of Design Criteria; Examples of Manisa City Forum Magnesia and ？zmir City Optimum Outlet Shopping Center

Shopping centers have been changing and advancing throughout the history, becoming special places in terms of worldwide utilization of commercial lands and their structure type. With today’s changing conditions, the requests and needs of the users are rapidly evolving so they are demanding new shopping habits and values. With each passing day, people’s lifestyle choices are changing. Their need to have places with higher quality in which they can find everything they need, spend their free time, have fun and do shopping under the same roof, is increasing. Within the scope of this study; criteria that need to be followed while choosing the place for a shopping mall are addressed and an application is conducted on how suitable these predetermined places are for a shopping center. The chosen study fields are the frequently used places in the Aegean Region, ？zmir Optimum Outlet Shopping Center and Manisa Forum Magnesia Shopping Center. The quality and quantity of structural/botanical landscape elements of these places and the sufficiency of these elements are compared. Both places are evaluated by experts and their design criteria are matched against one another. Design criteria are evaluated under two groups as living materials and inanimate materials. Natural and botanical landscaping texture of the study areas are examined under the criteria of living materials. Whereas, the structural urban landscaping fabric and the reinforcement elements of the study areas are researched as the criteria of inanimate materials