Evaluating and locating the optimal use of higher education for sustainable development(Case Study: Azad University, Sari Branch)

public services are the core of urban land use planning. Educational services are one of the most basic urban services that are not usually coordinated with the rapid growth of the population, and the levels allocated to these services are less than the need for education. The result of such a shortage is the reduction of per capita educational spaces and, on the other hand, the unbalanced spatial distribution of educational centers and, ultimately, the reduction of the desirability and efficiency of these spaces.

The purpose of the present research is to measure and locate the optimal use of higher education in the direction of sustainable development in Sari city.

This research is applied and descriptive-analytical in terms of purpose and nature. The study aims at locating higher education institutions for sustainable development of Sari City, and the Islamic Azad University of Sari branch has been considered as a sample in this research. In the field study, we provided questionnaires among 20 specialists in urban planning, geography and urban planning (11 PhDs and 9 Masters) and 15 specialists in architecture (9 PhDs and 6 Masters). For this purpose, the FAHP model has been used to weigh and determine the effect size of the studied variables in the final goal of the research. The Raster Calculator option and the addition operator were used to make a combined overlapping layer. In the next step, the proposed locations are evaluated according to the criteria's importance and the options matrix. Then, by obtaining the final weight of the options, the land that had the most compatibility with the desired criteria was selected as the best option.

Geographical Context: 

The geographical scope of the present study is Sari City, where higher education was studied.

The criteria required to select a suitable place for higher education are divided into three general sections: environmental dimension - ecological dimension, cultural-social dimension and physical dimension. Based on the questionnaires, the sub-criterion of "fault" in the ecological, environmental dimension, the sub-criterion of "proximity to other academic centers" in the socio-cultural criterion and the sub-criterion "proximity to the access network" in the physical criterion are of higher priority. They meet other criteria and require more attention in locating higher education centers. Lands belonging to the use of higher education with an area of ​​over three thousand square meters in Sari, which is close to the city's centre, have been studied and selected to evaluate and optimize the space. Out of the six selected fields, the B field with the highest weight is more compatible with the desired sub-criteria. Therefore, land B can be considered more suitable for higher education (Islamic Azad University) among the six lands studied.

The results of FAHP analysis in relation to the use of higher education (Islamic Azad University) in the city of Sari have shown that land B has the highest compliance with the criteria and has the highest priority over the other five options.