About Başakşehir

Başakşehir is one of 39 districts of Istanbul. With its population of 380.000, it is located on the European side of Istanbul and covers a large area of 104 km2

It is estimated that the current population of 380.000 to reach 800.000 in 2019. While 40% of the population is under 20 years old, 43% is aged 20-44 and highly educated. It is home to one of the biggest Organized Industrial Zones in Turkey with more than 20.000 SME’s. While Başakşehir District has all the properties that will provide the human

resources and infrastructure capacity that is needed for the Living-Lab, it also has enough space for a “A Smart City” to include necessaryamount of technology within its boundaries. Başakşehir is one of the rare locations that can be an example to Turkey, region and the world interms of smart city planning and producing new technologies. Primary reasons of this are;

(i) Location and Transport: Başakşehir, one of the suburban districts of Istanbul, is close to many national and international companies, institutions, technical universities and techno parks in Istanbul and

around. It is surroundednby highways that makes access easy. Başakşehir is 20 Km away from Atatürk International Airport, and 25 km. away from Istanbul city center.

 

(ii) Advanced in Technology and Innovation Applications

Başakşehir Municipality is one of the municipalities that uses the information technologies in the best way possible. It actively provides its citizens with many services using information technologies and carries out projects to provide these services. Some of these are;

  •  Prevalence and low cost of broadband infrastructure,
  • Access to internet

*Fiber optic infrastructure witch enable speeds upto 1 GB

* Wireless Access Points (Hot Spots) in public places

  • Public services such as security, medicine, education and governmental services via the following platforms;

*Fixed and mobile web portals and applications,

*E-municipality and M-municipality applications and portals,

  • Başakşehir Wi-Fi and Başakşehir Mobile Apps.
  • Security technologies.

(iii) Other primary properties that makes Başakşehir favourable for

both the Living-Lab and being “A City of International Technologies”:

  •  Leading new generation city planning,
  • Municipality services and functions that are appropriate for
  • High education level of Başakşehir its citizens and their fast
  •  Free education services for applied technologies,
  •  Having large areas suitable for building a “City of Information
  • Easy access to high quality human resources, life business
  • Big market potential in B-to-B tests due to the close proximity to
  • The close proximity to many Technical Universities and their Techno Parks, ,
  • Its position in an expanding region: the fact that it is a big market in B-to-C service tests and sales with its expected population of 800.000 in 2020,
  • Opportunity of swiftly getting economical added value from products and services that are developed, due to the region being one of the world’s leading commercial centers.