Land Suitability Analysis for Residential Development in an Ecologically Sensitive Area: A Case Study of Nusantara, the New Indonesian Capital

Land suitability analysis is a process of evaluating various criteria to assess the appropriateness of land for specific purposes, such as agriculture, urban development, conservation, or infrastructure projects. This paper integrates multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and geographic information systems (GIS) to assess potential residential development suitability in Nusantara—the new Indonesian Capital. This study used two models to evaluate residential development suitability—a simple suitability model with equal criteria weight and a weighted suitability model using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach with two scenarios (waterfront city and biodiversity-positive city). Various criteria, including physical attributes, natural preservation and protection, blue amenities, transport accessibility, and natural disaster risks, were analysed. Integrating MCA with the AHP approach and GIS can be considered an advanced methodology. The simple suitability model is relatively more straightforward than the weighted suitability model since it does not require a weighting process. However, the weighted suitability model produced more nuanced results for the case study as the approach more accurately models real-world conditions. The weighted suitability analysis showed that most of the western and eastern parts of the new capital are highly suitable for future residential development. Comparing the Indonesian government’s planned residential areas with the result of the weighted suitability model for the biodiversity-positive city scenario showed that most planned residential areas are in highly suitable areas. The methodologies in the paper can be extended to similar contexts in different geographical areas.