Introducing a Conceptual Framework for Spatial Decision SIM: A Tool Supports Decisions for Stakeholders

Background

It has become increasingly evident that decision-making is becoming a highly complex process. Centralized “traditional comprehensive” planning has many difficulties related to its complexities. In this model, only planners and decision-makers have the right to decide what, where, and how to take actions. Nowadays, slums, urban poverty, urban heat islands, traffic jams, environmental degradation, and inflation, stagflation are among the common phenomena that our earth is suffering from. These phenomena negatively affect the environment. One of the leading causes of these phenomena is the monopolization of resources, information, responsibilities, and decision-making processes.

From another point of view, and assuming that people have the right to decide. A safe, attractive and healthy living environment, with adequate reachable services and employment is the average resident’s desire (Koomen, 2008). Residents’ desires are different, changeable by time, and perhaps inapplicable, especially regarding available resources. Decision processes must consider a wide range of often-conflicting objectives at different spatial and temporal scales, and there is a need to synthesize a viable alternative for communication between a wide range of stakeholders (Afifi, 2014). Acknowledgement and participation are considered a step towards gaining public satisfaction. In this way, residents should understand the details about decisions related to their future. They also need to be informed about the system of allocating different types of projects and their consequences, so that they can objectively make decisions..