Developing a Citizen-Centric Spatial Decision-Making System to Support the Process of Participatory Construction in Urban Distressed Textures

Todays, urban distressed textures are considered as a vital concern of managers, particularly in large cities. These areas, which also appear in official parts of cities, are vulnerable because of prospective problems. Lack of proper accessibility, services, facilities, and infrastructures, as well as social, economic, environmental and spatial problems, are key problems of these areas. Although extensive modernization and refinement have always been emphasized by urban managers, there is always a top-down approach apply for the renovation of these areas. Because of inhabitant’s poverty, social and constitutional problems, there is no chance for the renovation of these areas without the contribution of the public and private sector. Failure to pay enough attention to the key role of the people and the participation of citizens has promptly led to the failure of many modernization plans and programs. Considering the active interaction of citizens and the private sector in the process of building and upgrading these areas will increase the success of such projects. Using spatial decision support tools can represent an appropriate way for effective communication between stakeholders (residents, private and public sector). The purpose of the present research is to develop a citizen-centric spatial decision-making system to carefully foster and facilitate the process of constructive participation in urban distressed texture. The proposed system provides a combination of citizen-centered GIS capabilities and multi-criteria decision analysis in an open-source framework (open-source software and technologies) to facilitate citizen-centered modernization of urban distressed textures.