Application of Hierarchical Approach to Estimate the Importance of Elements of Urban Development in a Fuzzy Environment

Today human is engaged with a great crisis as a result of his unbalancing the life, neglecting indigenous and environmental factors, and hegemonic behavior toward nature. This has ended to creation of an approach called sustainable development whose main aims are to meet the essential needs, improvement of life quality, and better management of ecosystems. Obviously it is meaningless to discuss sustainability and sustainable development in the absence of cities and urban life. Cities are counted for as the main reasons for unsustainability the world over, however urban sustainability and global sustainability are the same concepts. Therefore, knowing key elements to reach this station is necessary, whereas recognition and prioritization of effective key elements in sustainable development is strategic and entails economic, social, and health-related results in the sequence of time. The current study is descriptive-analytic in which attempts have been made to estimate the importance of main indices of sustainable development based on the opinions of elites using a fuzzy hierarchical analysis process technic. Analysis of the data shows that from among main indices, urban health, desirable governmental system, and sustainable environment are respectively of the highest importance.