Abstract
The chaos environment created by rapid population growth in cities must be manageable and controllable. Urban growth and simulation models which are important for applying planned changes also have a crucial role in terms of applicability of these plans. The SLEUTH programme is the mostly preferred one among the cellular automata based models that are used for analyzing urban growth. Simulations with SLEUTH are completed in 3 stages: test, calibration and prediction. During calibration period, it is aimed to calculate the optimum growth coefficient values through the Optimum Sleuth Metric (OSM). The optimum coefficient values are calculated conforming to 13 metrics by using Brute Force Calibration technique. Although the OSM and Lee-Sallee techniques are frequently encountered in literature, there is no consensus upon which one or ones of the 13 metrics are to be used for determining coefficient values during calibration. Within this scope, in this study, an urban growth simulation model for Istanbul was created by using the OSM technique. According to the results, in the year 2040, %83,50 of agricultural lands and %58,30 of forest lands will have the potential for urbanization.