Designing sustainable public spaces in Khobar, Saudi Arabia: a decision-support framework integrating mobility and transport connectivity using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Public Sustainable urban spaces are essential in improving the livability, inclusivity, and environmental sustainability of cities, especially in fast-urbanizing cities facing climatic and infrastructural problems. The planning of public spaces in Gulf cities, including Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, needs to be systematic, balancing various dimensions of sustainability and considering local contextual conditions. The study constructs a decision-support model to rank the sustainability criteria of the design of a public space by combining Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11) with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The sustainability criteria were organized into four broad dimensions, namely, physical, economic, administrative, and social dimensions, and operationalized using an AHP hierarchy. A panel of 32 experts with professional experience in urban planning, transport, architecture, and sustainability conducted pairwise comparisons. All the comparison matrices had consistency ratios within the acceptable range (CR ≤ 0.10), indicating expert judgment. The results indicate that the physical dimension was the most weighted in total (43.1%), then economic (22.0%), administrative (18.5%), and social dimension (16.4). The sub-criteria that ranked highest under the physical dimension were preservation of cultural and historical resources, connection with transport and active mobility and climate-suited green infrastructure. The research adds a localized hierarchical AHP-based decision support model of sustainable planning of the Al Khobar public space. The framework helps the planners and policymakers to prioritize the interventions and explicitly define the role of expert judgment and contextual constraints.