Locating Urban Green Space Using Analytical Network Process and GIS (Case Study: Jahrom City)

Given the increasing role of service activities in the urbanization system today, the how of service centers’ distribution and accessed to the service of these centers is of critical importance. One of the urban services that is currently scarce and unjustly distributed in Iranian cities is urban green space. In Jahrom, location priorities for green space have not been done with the decision making models and evaluation of the best model. This study investigates the optimal locations of urban green spaces in Jahrom City. The location of green space depends on factors, such as existing green space criteria, population density, communication network, access to unused land, and other uses. For this purpose, the Analytical Network Process (ANP) and Geographic Information System (GIS) are used to apply weights at relevant layers and extract models. For zoning unused lands, the zones are divided into three categories of low, medium and high utility. Medium utility with 45.45% of land area is ranked first, and high and low desirability are ranked next, respectively. In the ANP method, the criteria are organized into four clusters of desirability, comfort, demographic and neighborhood. In this method, indices of proximity to residential centers and distance from existing parks with coefficients of 0.319 and 0.193 have the highest importance, respectively. Indices of land dimensions and accessibility with coefficients of 0.006 and 0.017 have the least importance in the decision making process for identifying suitable areas of green space in Jahrom. Based on the results, the best locations for future parks are the southern and eastern idle lands located in District two and the southwest and northeast idle lands in district three of the study area. Approximately 38% of the idle lands in the city are of medium desirability and 31.65% are highly desirable.