Providing a spatial index to evaluate deteriorated urban textures by geographical information system and multi-criteria decision making

The phenomenon of urbanism has caused cities to adopt a new spatial arrangement and old, deteriorated urban textures receive less attentions than before. This lack of attention brings several socio-economic and environmental issues for these textures and make them to convert to deteriorated urban texture. Therefore, todays detecting deteriorated urban texture is the primary step for modern planning. Proposing an integrated spatial index is the novelty of the research to determine the level of deteriorated urban texture in an study area. Indeed, this index consists of a set of spatial criteria such as graining, age of building, and permeability, that are calculated through geographical information systems. Among these criteria, permeability needs more notice in modeling compared to previous works. Thus, in this research based on accessibility, street crossing, and traffic indicators are utilize to evaluate permeability efficiently. In the next step, these criteria are combined based on the opinions of experts and with the help of multi-criteria decision making to create an integrated spatial index. Finally, in order to show the results of this index, the values for deterioration has been illustrated in 5 class from very low to very high deterioration at neighborhood scale of Tehran's 7th region. Comparison of the results of the index with the reference data, ameliorated activities as well as with field surveys, shows the high verification of the proposed index.