Infill development approach: A smart transition way to the sustainable future urban development

• Published in: Sustainable computing informatics and systems Vol. 32; p. 100614
• Main Authors: Ghodsi, Narges, Nastaran, Mahin, Izadi, Ardalan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01-12-2021
• Subjects: Infill development; Isfahan city; Spatial analysis; Urban water infrastructures; Spatial analysis; Urban water infrastructures; Isfahan city; Infill development
• ISSN: 2210-5379
• DOI: 10.1016/j.suscom.2021.100614

•A three-step framework is proposed here to identify prone areas of implementing infill development.•In the first, the extent of area is analyzed based on the excess capacity of Infrastructure networks.•In the second step, the extent of area is classified into High, Medium and Low Ability to Development.•All neighborhoods of area are ranked for future development by Simple Additive Weighting method.•The main achievement of paper is better using of unconsidered urban infrastructure opportunities.
In this paper, a three-step framework is proposed to identify prone areas of implementing infill development in district No. 1 of Isfahan Municipality in central Iran based on urban water infrastructures. In the first step, based on the accessibility to existence of excess capacities of water and wastewater networks the extent of study area is analyzed. In the second step, based on the combination of mentioned infrastructures capacities, the extent of study area is classified into three zones entitled High, Medium and Low Ability to Development. In fact, each of this zone reflects a specific level of ability for the potential future development. Then share and extension of unused areas in these zones are discovered. Finally, by calculating the weight of each zone by AHP approach and then using them as well as the areas of unused lands as the input variables in the Simple Additive Weighting method, all the neighborhoods within the study area were ranked for future development. The results show that not only access to urban water infrastructure must not be considered as the only criterion for deciding about future development but also excess capacity in these infrastructures and their location are more crucial. Also, the results of sensitivity analyses show that uncertainties involved in AHP weights can truly be handled in the proposed framework. Leading to better use of unconsidered urban infrastructure opportunities and provide better sight for future land-use planning can be interpreted as the main achievement of this research.