A sustainable municipal GIS study with urban design criteria and policy

The escalating population in urban areas underscores the critical importance of managing and planning cities effectively. Ensuring the sustainability of cities and creating livable spaces for people necessitates the planning or improvement of cities based on objective criteria and needs analyses. Since cities are communal spaces shared by all their inhabitants, planning according to urban design criteria is essential for enhancing the livability of cities. The consideration of numerous criteria in urban planning directly influences the decision-making processes of planners. The integration of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods into a Municipal GIS (MGIS) model presents an effective approach for addressing emerging issues and conducting planning based on objective criteria. This study aims to develop an efficient urban planning and management model, MGIS, by utilizing GIS and MCDM methods together, and employing the Game Theory method to minimize the differences among selected MCDM methods. Within this context, urban design criteria identified for this study have been analyzed using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Entropy Weight Method (EWM), Game Theory, and Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) methods, and applied in the Konak district of Izmir. Furthermore, to enable local governments to manage their limited resources effectively, identify areas for investment, and rank these areas according to their importance, the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method has been integrated into the MGIS model. The findings of the study reveal that the proportion of the most livable areas in the application site is 17.92% according to the AHP method, 19.86% according to the EWM method, and 18.67% according to Game Theory. The weighted ranking by AHP and Game Theory identified the primary investment area as I_12, whereas the EWM method indicated this area as I_9. In the equal-weighted ranking, I_9 was determined to be the most prioritized investment area across all methods.