An evaluation thermometer for assessing city sustainability and livability

Inês F.C Reis,Fernando A.F Ferreira,Ieva Meidutė-Kavaliauskienė,Kannan Govindan,Wenchang Fang,Pedro F Falcão

doi:10.1016/j.scs.2019.101449

Abstract

The real estate industry is an important indicator of national economic growth and development, which is influenced by the environment in which it operates. Various countries have been seriously affected by the most recent international financial crisis. Nevertheless, regardless of the challenges some cities currently face and the impacts on their sustainable livability, urban real estate is still of interest to investors. Given this context, researchers have sought to develop and apply methods of evaluating sustainable livability in cities. However, most practical applications have been hampered by methodological limitations (e.g., how to select and weight criteria in evaluations), which has hampered progress in this area. The present study thus aimed to develop a knowledge-based decision support system to evaluate city sustainability and livability in a transparent and informed way. To achieve its goal, this research combined cognitive mapping techniques and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Based on real-world data, the advantages and limitations of this integrative evaluation system are discussed.

Highlights

The residential real estate industry is most often related to choosing suitable residences or their locations
T these two approaches have produced excellent results when dealing with P complex real problems due to their simplicity and ease of application, the literature review I conducted for the present study revealed no prior report of the combined use of these R approaches in the context of city sustainability and livability
PT Given the nature of the real estate industry and the role of sustainable livability in urban I planning projects, this study sought to develop a new approach to constructing R knowledge-based decision support systems for assessing city sustainability and C livability

Summary

Introduction

The residential real estate industry is most often related to choosing suitable residences or their locations. According to Uysal and Tosun (2014: 322), real estate decisions are a result of a “complex function of a wide range of housing and location attributes”. Some of these attributes are related to searching for livable and sustainable neighborhoods I The need to find sustainable and livable conditions in neighborhoods and/or cities is R connected to the challenges cities face on a daily basis These include, first, the complexity C of city housing markets and, second, personal preferences since “each person has [...] S different [ideas about] pleasurable and socio-economic properties” (Uysal and Tosun, 2014: 393).

Methods

Results

Conclusion