Multicriteria methodological-rational model to evaluated urban areas: A case study of the São Paulo City/Brazil

Abstract

Differently from what literature indicates, the relationship between socio-spatial metrics is not necessarily systematic in urban areas. In other words, the most compact areas are not always the most diverse areas; neither are the areas with higher population density the areas with the higher job densities, in the case of São Paulo municipality. The dependence among these urban variables is not clear and direct, and possibly it is influenced, in a more comprehensive approach, by other urban factors. Today, there is a research question about how to systematically analyse various criteria in urban planning decisions. Therefore, the application of a multicriterial model, which considers the heterogeneity of the city, based on indicators that present the characteristics of economic and social development of a region, can help to identify areas that should be the object of, for example, more investments and greater incentives from State power. The objective of this article is to propose and apply a new methodological-rational model for the distribution of comparative weights in multicriteria analyses, in the context of urban planning, using the municipality of São Paulo as a case study. Specifically, to the method application in the São Paulo case study, a significant influence of the job density was verified in the hierarchy of urban areas, while the diversity emerged as the most dominant criterion that influence the characteristics of urban areas in the city. The results also show that a multicriterial analysis using indicators might contribute to the establishment of specific hierarchies for different urban areas, useful for city managers and researchers, able to be applied in different cities. Besides, the method may be suitable in other multicriterial problem contexts, as it represents a Decision Support System for trade-off and uncertainty analysis.