Spatial analysis and evaluation of urban spaces from the elderly-friendly city perspective (Study area: District 6 of Tehran, Iran)

With the increase in the elderly population, the calm and healthy urban environments must be provided according to the elderly needs and preferences. In recent year urban environments are being monitored and evaluated by urban planners and managers to improve the quality of the elderly life and urban aged-friendliness. There are a variety of approaches to these surveys, from traditional questionnaire completion methods to the use of GIS-MCDA algorithms, all of which have been used in research. In the present study, two GIS-based MCDA approaches, including global and local TOPSIS, multi-criteria decision making based on GIS system for evaluation of Elderly Friendly City in Parts of Region 6. Seven criteria, including distance from health services, distance from transportation services, security, pollution, distance from public services, sidewalks status, and distance from green space were chosen as the inputs for the GIS-MCDA process. The initial weights of criteria were calculated using Best-Worst Method (BWM). According to the results derived from global TOPSIS, there is a decreasing trend in the aged-friendliness form the northern to southern areas, while there is not any trends in the output of local TOPSIS method. Moreover, the total area of urban blocks with high values of age-friendliness using global TOPSIS (622528.46 m2) was more than local TOPSIS (401899.76 m2). Comparing the age-friendliness map obtained by the two methods and the map generated using the field surveys ( Borda method) shows that the results of global TOPSIS are more consistent with the field-based map.