Site Selection and Suitability Analysis of Urban Green Space Based on Ecological Principles: Case Study of Birjand Local Parks

Green space, as a social development indicator has environmental, social, cultural, economical, and skeletal aspects and to be able to play its role effectively, the first and most important step is to select an appropriate site for it. Site selection necessitates stability analysis of urban green space. The main three steps are identifying stability factors, AHP-based weighting factors and layers overlaying and providing suitability map. The map shows appropriate places for developing local parks and it helps to analyze the stability of the existing parks. In the present research, to analyze the stability of urban green space in Birjand (on local park scale), three criteria are selected as follows: (1) physical or environmental which is divided into two groups of local criteria (slope, distance from water resource) and situational (distance from residential areas, distance from main streets, distance from educational and cultural centers and land price), (2) population criteria (population density) and (3) ecological criteria (patch richness, patch relations and …). Therefore, after providing a suitability map, social and ecological analyses were combined with situational local analysis to have a holistic analysis of green space. Finally, the findings and the current situation’s compatibility with the described plan was studied, the problems were addressed and the potential of different urban areas for developing this type of green space and site location were assessed.