Abstract
The objective of this study is to compare and rank the 81 provinces of Turkey by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in terms of urban sustainability. With this aim, economic, social and environmental sustainability indicators are used. The results indicate that the most sustainable alternative out of 81 is the Eskisehir province. It is followed by Çanakkale, Bursa, İzmir, Bilecik, Giresun, Edirne, Ankara, Rize and Manisa. On the other hand, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Muş, Kars, Bitlis, Yozgat, Sanliurfa, Van, and Batman are less sustainable cities, which are located in the eastern part of the country. Furthermore, the sustainability scores of provinces indicate the development gap between the east and the west of the country.
Highlights
Turkey has been facing the consequences of rapid population growth and unplanned urbanization like many other developing countries
The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) developed by Satty to provide a framework for dealing with decision-making problems and complex problems [3]
The basic principles of AHP can be summarized as defining and determining the problem; decomposing the problem in a hierarchy from top through the intermediate levels; constructing a set of pair-wise comparison matrices; testing the consistency index; synthesizing the hierarchy to find out the ranks of the alternatives [6]
Summary
Turkey has been facing the consequences of rapid population growth and unplanned urbanization like many other developing countries. Between 1950 and 1985, the population in the cities increased dramatically from 24.8% to 52.4%. Since 1985, the population living in the urban areas exceeded the rural population. While the average annual urban population growth rate for the country was 2.4% between 1990 and 2012, the estimated annual urban population growth rate between 2012 and 2030 is 1.6% [1]. By 2012, the percentage of population living in cities has reached to 72.5%. The increasing population growth and both domestic and international migration fastened the transformation process from rural to urban areas in the last decades. Due to the geographical position Turkey has been experiencing an intense refugee flow, more than 4 mil-
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