Plaza of monumental Inkaya Plane Tree

Plane tree in İnkaya village, on the road to Uludağ Mountain in Çekirge District of Osmangazi Municipality in Bursa City, coetaneous to Ottoman Empire with 598 years is famous worldwide. This tree which is an outstanding nature monument, gets its name from İnkaya village, one of the first villages of Ottoman Empire. The plane tree has 13 main branches, and each of them are as thick as the trunk of a plane tree. The height of İnkaya Plane Tree is 35 meters. This plane tree is one of the oldest trees of Turkey with a crown width of 9.2 meters, and width of its branches going up to 3 to 4 meters. İnkaya villager’s income is predominantly generated through visitors of the tree which may go up to ten thousand visitors on some days. Villagers also engage in agricultural and livestock activities, and the most of the harvests are sold to the visitors of the monumental tree.

However, this heavy commercial utilisation has both resulted in traffic jam in the center of the village and the tree itself is damaged due to the commercial activities taking place just beneath the tree. Osmangazi Municipality opened up a tender process including settlement area of village and commercial area in order to solve the traffic problem in the region which is actually an urban protection site with a protection oriented construction plan, and also to improve the urban texture and eliminate the commercial activities’ damage to the monumental plane tree at the same time. Solutions developed for the underneath of plane tree with heavy commercial activities enabled both surface water feed to the tree and took a step in preventing the damage of the tree roots due to heavy pressure from the ground. In addition to these, alternatives are developed for the solution of traffic and parking problem, as well as sales of rural local products.

Authors: Halim Perçin, Ekrem Kurum, Şükran Şahin, Alper Çabuk, Elif Namal, Saye N. Çabuk Ankara University Technopolis AZTATEK Co.
Photo Credit: Aztatek
Country: Turkey