Sustainability assessment of compact-city development using geodesign approach

Abstract

Improving and evaluation of development plans is an essential to ensure a better planning and design practice. Compact city development is an urban design and planning concept that is noted to be very useful to ensure sustainability and overcome environmental, economic and social problems caused by urban sprawl. However, the outcomes and impacts of compact city development are not clear if using the conventional spatial analysis methods for evaluation. This study intends to improve and advance the process and methodology of assessing compact city development taking benefit from the new emerging concept of GeoDesign. This study is carried out in the city center of Johor Bahru, the capital city of the State of Johor, Malaysia. As a result, the study highlights compact city 2D and 3D indicators and the importance of these indicators is ranked under each development scenario based on expert’s opinions. The study develops a composite sustainability index map in three scenarios environmental protection, economic efficiency, and social equity. Then, the GeoDesign approach applied for evaluating the compact city development. Finally, the computed sustainability index map of Spatial Multi Criteria Analysis (SMCA) model was analyzed and combined with 3D GeoDesign visualization to examine the sustainability levels of future development of the study area. GeoDesign dealt with centrality, high density and proximity, intensification, mixed land uses and public transit systems. The study found that the future development of the study area is a polycentric urban structure, and the proposed light rail transit (LRT) stations of transit oriented development (TOD) concept are not located in the core of the proposed high density mixed land uses urban centers. Furthermore, the assessment of development sustainability by considering planning and design criteria through GeoDesign enhanced the results of simulated analysis and reduced the possibilities for disregarding any of the related measures of the involved sustainable development concept.