Transitions between Centralization and Metapolization: From City Development Strategy (CDS) to Peri-Urban Development Strategy (PDS)

Abstract

The elaboration of City Development Strategies (CDS) helps cities to harness the potential of urbanization through strategic planning, and consequently to contribute to promoting development, balancing city growth, and empowering citizens. Continuous and sprawling development along with peri-urban areas has offered a vast and almost limitless nexus of villages–towns upon which the intensifying needs of development, initiatives, and infrastructures can be grafted. Considering the significant role of constructed nexuses in growth and resilience, and thus in planning for the sustainable development of such urban–rural areas, this study will advance the development of a model of the Urban–Rural Reef ecosystem through discovering its main attributes. In doing so, Aveiro has been distinguished as an urban–rural reef to describe such a case study’s characteristics and to extract the indicators of peri-urban sustainable development strategies. In the next step, the assessment of the peri-urban development strategy (PDS) has been accomplished by using the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDM) method and applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. Finally, a conclusion has been presented based on the findings for Aveiro urban–rural reefs containing the analysis results and offering some solutions.