Analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy rule based system-integrated methodology for urban land use planning

While the specific constraints may vary over time and by location, urban planners essentially execute the same function, namely to create effective urban areas subject to the constraints of land, resources, finance and time. Thereby, it should be emphasized that planned urban forms cannot be excluded from organic growth processes. Land-use planning is regarded as a branch of urban planning including various disciplines which aims at providing land-use in an efficient and ethical way, thus preventing land-use conflicts. A crucial stage in land-use planning is the suitability analysis, which is the central part of land-use evaluation. Modern planning theories lead to approaches that consider all stakeholders with a variety of discourse values to avoid political and manipulative decisions. In recent years, application of quantitative approaches such as multi-criteria decision making techniques (MCDM) in land suitability procedures has increased. However, it is generally impossible to provide a land-use allocation satisfying each land-use goal simultaneously. Among MCDM techniques, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), allowing subjective judgments in a consistent way, has the ability of including the criteria of land-use planning in a structured way. In addition, fuzzy rule based systems (FRBS) can be regarded as an appropriate method to capture and represent vague, imprecise and uncertain data in urban land-use planning. In this context, this chapter proposes an AHP-FRBS integrated methodology with the aim of assessing urban land-use suitability. The proposed methodology is applied on a selected area in Turkey. Finally, scenario analysis is performed so as to evaluate different scenarios.