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March 29, 2026Sustainability2 citationsOpen Access

Developing the Cilician Heritage Corridor: A Spatial Planning Framework for Sustainable Cultural Tourism Across Archaeological and Environmental Landscapes Centred on the Adana–Kozan–Anavarza Axis (Türkiye)

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FÇFatma Seda ÇardakRARozelin Aydın

Key Points

  • Examine the Adana–Kozan–Anavarza axis to propose a framework for sustainable cultural tourism that respects heritage value.
  • Conducted spatial accessibility assessments
  • Evaluated service capacity within the area
  • Performed field observations on the landscape
  • Designed sequential visitor routes for effective tourism flow
  • Developed a hierarchical gateway–transition–anchor configuration
  • Outlined a tourism framework balancing visitor distribution and environmental sensitivity
  • Identified Adana as a metropolitan gateway and Anavarza as the archaeological anchor
  • Noted projected increase in visitor numbers from 2022 to 2024, emphasizing the need for proactive planning
  • Established a context-responsive planning approach rather than a predictive model for heritage sites

Abstract

Dispersed archaeological landscapes are often rich in heritage value but weakly integrated into regional tourism systems. This creates difficulties in visitor orientation, interpretive continuity, and conservation-sensitive tourism planning. In response to this problem, this study examines the Adana–Kozan–Anavarza axis in southern Türkiye and proposes a spatial corridor framework for organising tourism development within a dispersed archaeological landscape. The research integrates spatial accessibility assessment, service-capacity evaluation, field observation, and sequential route design in order to establish a hierarchical gateway–transition–anchor configuration. Anavarza, one of the largest archaeological complexes of Cilicia, represents a monumental urban heritage site and a biocultural landscape situated within a Mediterranean ecological zone historically associated with Pedanius Dioscorides. Although current visitor volumes remain moderate, official statistics indicate a substantial increase in annual entries between 2022 and 2024, reflecting rising destination visibility. This emerging growth trajectory underscores the need for proactive spatial governance mechanisms prior to the onset of congestion and environmental degradation pressures. The findings suggest that Adana can function as a metropolitan gateway, Kozan as an intermediate staging node, and Anavarza as the archaeological anchor within a realistic multi-day visitor sequence. In this configuration, visitor functions are distributed across multiple nodes, while the ecological and archaeological sensitivity of the anchor landscape is more cautiously managed through spatial sequencing. Rather than proposing a predictive model, the study develops and assesses a context-responsive spatial planning framework grounded in accessibility, infrastructural feasibility, and conservation-sensitive visitor distribution. Beyond the local case, the study offers a transferable hierarchical staging logic for corridor-based heritage planning.

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Cite This Study

Çardak et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69c8c1f4de0f0f753b39c1ebhttps://doi.org/10.3390/su18073260
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