Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, No. 51 (2021): 25–34 http://doi.org/10.2478/bog-2021-0002 BULLETIN OF GEOGRAPHY. SOCIO–ECONOMIC SERIES journal homepages: https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/bog/bog-overview.xml ISSN 1732–4254 quarterly http://apcz.umk.pl/czasopisma/index.php/BGSS/index Evaluating housing in urban planning using TOPSIS technique: cities of Isfahan province Maliheh Izadi1, CDFMR, Mehdi Jafari Vardanjani2, CDFMR, Hamidreza Varesi3, CDFMR 1University of Isfahan, Faculty of Geography, Department of Urban Planning, Isfahan, Iran, e-mail: [email protected] (cor- responding author); 2Technical and Vocational University (TVU), Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Mohajer, Is- fahan Branch, Isfahan, Iran, Isfahan, Iran, e-mail: [email protected]; 3University of Isfahan, Faculty of Geography, Department of Urban Planning, Isfahan, Iran, e-mail: [email protected] How to cite: Izadi, M. Vardanjani, M.J. and Varesi, H. (2021). Evaluating housing in urban planning using TOPSIS technique: cities of Isfahan province. Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, 51(51): 24-34. DOI: http://doi.org/10.2478/bog-2021-0002 Abstract. The indices of housing serve as an important tool in planning for hous- ing, in that they allow the parameters affecting housing to be recognised and any Article details: planning process to be facilitated. The purpose of the study is to investigate and Received: 29 February 2020 to evaluate the housing situation in cities of Isfahan province. The study is ap- Revised: 6 December 2020 plied and descriptive-analytic in terms of method. Thirty-nine indices were col- Accepted: 20 January 2021 lected in the housing sector. Then the rate of prosperity and ranking of the cities were evaluated by TOPSIS method. Prosperity is defined here as an important in- dex of housing that reflects the welfare of residents. The cities were then catego- rised into six levels of prosperity: Very important, Important, Partially important, Key words: Moderate, Poor and Very poor. The results from the study indicate an imbalance Spatial analysis, in the studied indices between the cities, and a clear disparity between the levels Housing indices, of prosperity in the cities, and the only city in the very prosperous group is Isfa- Isfahan province cities, han, with a rate of 0.813. Shannon entropy, TOPSIS Contents: 1. Introduction . 26 2. Methods ............................................................................... 27 2.1. TOPSIS model ..................................................................... 27 2.2. Shannon entropy method ........................................................... 28 3. Results and discussion .................................................................. 28 3.1. Evaluation of housing indices in cities based on census................................. 28 © 2021 (Maliheh Izadi, Mehdi Jafari Vardanjani and Hamidreza Varesi) This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons At- tribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 26 Maliheh Izadi, Mehdi Jafari Vardanjani and Hamidreza Varesi / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 51 (2021): 25–34 3.2. Using TOPSIS to rank cities in Isfahan province by housing indices ..................... 30 4. Conclusion............................................................................. 32 References ............................................................................... 33 1. Introduction sizes (area of substructure), resulting in spatial trap (Marquez, Dodge Francis and Gerstenberger, 2019). Given that planning for housing development is Housing is one of the most basic human needs. This one of the most important parts of urban planning, requirement has played an important role since ear- economic factors such as cost of living, employment ly settlements. Many researchers in the field of ur- and unstable income play very important roles in ban studies believe that housing and environmental housing planning. This planning is one of the prior- circumstances serve as the most important factor ities in urban planning (Sendich, 2006: 185). influencing individuals’ satisfaction in terms of re- One of the most important ways of determin- gion of living and lifestyle (Bartik, 1988; Freeman, ing the status of housing in the planning process is 1981; Horsch and Lewis, 2008; Muriel, Abdelhak, using housing indices. Such indices represent the Gildas and François, 2008; Patrick and Wade, 1994). quantity and quality of housing in each period on Living in an abnormal residential situation desta- the one hand, and serve as an effective guide for im- bilises and disturbs the physical and mental health proving the future planning process for housing on of residents (Won Kim, Phipps and Anselin, 2003). the other. The importance of this research derives In developed countries, housing is considered to from the development of housing being one of the fall within the domain of social welfare, and hous- most necessary issues encountered by individuals in ing development policies are focused on improving society; thus, a house or dwelling can be thought quality of life. By contrast, in developing countries, of as a collection of relevant desired behaviours the lack of adequate resources, poor economic man- and spatial qualities (Lich, 1997: 98). Therefore, the agement, lack of comprehensive national planning, need to consider housing and its regional and urban and rapid population growth have complicated ef- planning is greater than before if citizens’ problems forts to supply housing (Woodfield, 1989: 5). At the are to be resolved using the knowledge and tech- same time, housing is a determining commodity in niques of planning (Judge, Warren-Myers and Pal- the society that plays an influential role in the for- adino, 2019; Siqueira-Gay and Sánchez, 2019). mation of personal identity, social relations and in- The general definition and concept of housing dividuals’ goals. Rather than being a purely physical include not only a residential unit but also the to- structure, it acts as a unit with multi-dimension- tal residential environment. In other words, housing al performance, with various spatial, architectural, is more than a physical shelter (Adabre and Chan, structural, physical, economic, social, financial, psy- 2019; Asfour, 2017). The concept of adequate hous- chological and medical aspects (Short, 2006: 199). ing should not be sought in purely physical dimen- In fact, inadequate housing leads to the issue of spa- sions, but also in the biological, cultural, social, tial traps. The spatial trap of housing is generated in economic and security needs and desires of its res- terms of forms of both internal and external qual- idents (Wolman, 2014). The emergence of the prob- ity. The external quality of housing means the geo- lem called “housing” in Iran and its proposal as a graphical location. In Iran, housing located in the social dilemma coincides with the development of margins of urban areas or old and impoverished capitalism. Turning housing into a capitalist com- neighbourhoods inside the cities are considered to modity with increasing prices results in prosperity be the spatial trap. The internal quality of housing imbalances between societal income classes. Grow- refers to inappropriate construction materials and ing urbanisation and increasing urban population equipment as well as insufficient building footprint have made the provision of housing into one of the most important problems in many cities (Khos- Maliheh Izadi, Mehdi Jafari Vardanjani and Hamidreza Varesi / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 51 (2021): 25–34 27 hakhlagh, 1999). Compared to other commodities, tance from the Zagros mountains in the west and housing can serve as a major cause of both inequal- the great desert in the east: (1) semi-humid and ity and, at the same time, social integration due to cold areas encompassing western and southern val- characteristics such as being non-renewable, invest- leys, including the sub-provinces of Golpāyagān, able, durable and unmovable (Gallent and Robin- ānsār, Faridan, Fereydunšahr and Semirom. (2) son, 2011). Thus, the achievement of desirable and Arid areas along the edge of the central desert, in- preferred housing in either urban or rural areas is cludingḴᵛ Nāʾin, Ardestān and Kāšān, as well as the considered to be an index of socio-economic de- area of desert climate in the easternmost villages velopment in countries around the world (Richard, of Anārak, ur and Jandaq. (3) The semi-arid re- 2008). Since the enactment of the Charter of Hu- gion of the oasis of Isfahan—with the Zāyandarud man Rights in 1948, the right to an adequate dwell- as the mainḴ water resource—marked by a moder- ing has been recognised as an important element of ate climate and four distinct seasons, including the prosperity in the desired quality of life. In this re- sub-provinces of Tirān and Karvan, Najafābād, Len- gard, the human settlement committee even pro- jān, Mobāraka, Falāvarjān, omeynišahr (formerly posed a universal strategy to settle humans with Mārbin) and Isfahan, as well as Šahreżā along the the main goal of providing a suitable dwelling for road to Fārs and Bor ār o ḴMeyma on the road to all social groups (Nikooseresht and Kharrat Zebar- Qom and Tehran. According to the 2016 census, ap- dast, 1996: 611). Using various techniques (Shan- proximately 88% are urbanḵᵛ residents and 12% reside non entropy, TOPSIS, Geographic