Ataşehir
Ataşehir district is an outcome of a project that aims to create a satellite town. Project started in 1993 and by 2005, Ataşehir was already an attractive enterprise zone for a building societies such as Ağaoğlu who invested heavily in this region. Skyscrapers and tall buildings appeared as silhouettes at a very short time. With this change in scale, Ataşehir became a modern and an upscale town. Concurrently, population increased fast and Ataşehir gained its own city hall in 2008 as being separated from Kadıköy district.
When new projects constituted, Ataşehir became a tidy and an elite area that residents can feel privileged with so many facilities and services offered. These facilities include cafes, restaurants, shopping malls, security services, pools, sports areas, jogging zones, bicycle roads and more. Apart from families, students of Yeditepe University also prefer to live in this district in order to be close to the university. Within the boundaries of Ataşehir, they are able to find whatever they need for their student life, including print centres and stationary. If you are living here, you don’t need to go far for anything as Ataşehir has almost everything to satisfy your needs. All new, all looking modern, consequently all comparatively expensive.
As trend of investment in Ataşehir continues, district enlarged through west, constituting ‘West Ataşehir’. The central Ataşehir became ‘East Ataşehir’ and called as ‘Old Ataşehir’ often. Today investments and constructions are proceeding fast as West Ataşehir is to house the future Financial Business District within couple of years. Optimum AVM, Palladium, Carrefour, Mozaik Çarşı, Novada are a couple of well-known shopping malls located within the borders of this district. Sometimes housing estates companies these malls. Metropol Istanbul is another mix-development project which is going to be the home of the tallest building in Europe. Famous basketball court; Ülker Sport Arena, is also located in Ataşehir. This arena also hosts national and international artists and groups like Andrea Bocelli, Jennifer Lopez and Cirque du Soleil, for concerts and shows from time to time.
Most people may think that Ataşehir is an ideal place to live in Istanbul, they may have point but you should not forget about the problem of traffic caused by poor quality planning of infrastructural design. Public transportation is a way of travelling around which is only provided by buses and dolmush (dolmuş) buses. At the moment there are no subway lines coming or passing directly through region. As more investment and new projects are on the way to develop the north- eastern Ataşehir, this remains to be a crucial problem for this district.