Mixed-use distribution index: A novel bilevel measure to address urban land-use mix pattern (A case study in Tehran, Iran)

Abstract

In land-use planning, the land-use mixed-ness is widely discussed as a pivotal factor that is highly related to smart growth and sustainable development goals, such as improving accessibility, socially-friendly walkable areas, social health outcomes, and quality of life. Despite proposing several indices, measuring land-use mixed-ness has always struggled with complexities such as determining land-use priorities, distance, and attributes, which needs a robust framework to consider for ideal mixed-ness and being improved constantly. By combining both divisional and integral indices, this paper has proposed a multi-component novel measure, which considers quantity, importance, distance, and balance in land-uses mixture along streets as main corridors of the daily commute in Tehran, Iran; named Mixed-use Distribution Index (MUDI). First, the measure calculates indices for land-use combination (LWC) and residential to non-residential land-uses (RR) in equal street sections. Then, the Gini index with some innovative spatial manipulation was applied to capture the evenness of ideal values of each index among streets’ sections. Finally, the MUDI of the street was achieved by averaging two Gini indices. Comparing Gini and MUDI values with current characteristics of the case study, accessibility level, and allocation of some land-uses claims for the measure's reliability to employ in land-use planning evaluations.