Urban land-use expansion is a challenging issue in developing countries. The expansion usually deteriorates other land-uses such as agriculture and natural resources. Urban expansion is unavoidable, thus, urban planners are always estimating the optimum regions for development. Due to the spatial component of this issue, GIS is widely used.
The complexity of urbanization may not be well-handled using simple GIS functions such as overlay. Land-use development may also use advanced functions of optimizations that are integrated in a GIS environment. Such optimization considers numerous conflicting criteria.
Even with taking all of the probable assumptions and constraints into account, it is possible that optimum result is not doable. Thus, it is desirable to suggest more than one (semi) optimum solutions. If the implementation of one solution is complex, other ones should be examined.
In this study, Modeling to Generate Alternatives (MGA) is used to determine the best sites for future urban land-uses in the vicinity of Qazvin with 1620 squared kilometers. This method which is based on linear programming (binary integer programming) can result in proper alternatives. The characteristic of the performed method is the use of Density-Based Design Constraint (DBDC) as a constraint that guaranties the contiguity and compactness of the suggested sites and prevents scattered developments. The results of this study not only offered the optimum sites for future urban land-use developments but also determined some other options to be chosen if the optimum solution is not admired.
F. Hosseinali, A. A. Alesheikh, F. Nourian. Determining the proper sites for urban land-use development in Qazvin using MGA method. JGST 2013; 3 (2) :101-115 URL: http://jgst.issgeac.ir/article-1-33-en.html