**1. Introduction**

The increasing population of the world and the influx of people into the cities make them central in planning for the future of humanity [1,2]. The United Nations proposed 17 goals within the framework of Agenda 2030 to make the development process more sustainable in the future [3]. Goal 11, perhaps the most spatial among these, directly targets various dimensions of cities. This goal aims to make cities more resilient, inclusive, safe, environmentally friendly, and protective of their heritage [4]. Nevertheless, keeping the balance between sustainable development and the preservation of heritage is a challenging endeavor that requires innovative methodological approaches capable of addressing the multifaceted nature of the problem from both perspectives [5].

The SDGs are often interconnected and cannot be achieved individually. The goals have an air of abstraction for the most part and lack an empirical action plan. They are often perceived as general guidelines or directions to move toward [6]. It seems that having a standardized metric to evaluate the success rate of moving toward the SDGs should be considered [7]. SDGs are general guidelines; thus, a significant problem associated with them is the lack of empirical solutions or, rather, ambiguities in how empirical solutions at a local scale can be achieved.

The influx of population makes planning for accommodation critical in urban settlements [8]; this often happens in three forms: new residential units, regeneration of existing

**Citation:** Kara, C.; Iranmanesh, A. Modelling and Assessing Sustainable Urban Regeneration for Historic Urban Quarters via Analytical Hierarchy Process. *Land* **2023**, *12*, 72. https://doi.org/10.3390/ land12010072

Academic Editors: Lucia Della Spina, Paola Pellegrini, Antonia Russo, Maria Rosa Valluzzi and Angela Viglianisi

Received: 21 November 2022 Revised: 19 December 2022 Accepted: 22 December 2022 Published: 26 December 2022

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

urban tissue, or informal settlements. In this regard, people's participation is an essential dimension of urban regeneration planning and policymaking [9]. Successful urban regeneration requires a balance between development and preservation [10]. Valencia et al. [11] state that "political will, coherent governance, and strong formal partnerships between the public sector, private sector, and civil society actors are key ingredients in achieving goals such as the SDGs." Bottom-up approaches that take into account the local residents' views and community-based frameworks are essential for sustainable and healthy regeneration practices [12]. The success of SDGs is dependent on the locality of their implementation strategies and how they affect the everyday lives of people [13]. This is especially critical as the vulnerable residential population is often most affected by regeneration plans that might have been designed with clear sustainability goals but without considering their needs [14]. The strive for sustainable development must not become a burden on lower social strata; instead, it needs to involve those people in the decision-making process [12].

Although Goal 11 targets cities and their attributes, the scholarly literature seems to be lacking in terms of addressing the interdisciplinary nature of urban regeneration with regard to the goal. It is evident that while tangible dimensions such as carbon emissions, materials, and climate have been thoroughly investigated [15], bottom-up urban design practices and the intrinsic socio-spatial quality of urban spaces seem not to be well defined within the framework of this goal. Many of these dimensions have been studied in urban design for decades outside the framework of SDGs, but moving toward seeing urban design frameworks through the lens of SDGs seems to be an inevitable necessity. The current paper focuses on the regeneration of historic urban quarters concerning Goal 11. The paper addresses the shortcomings of Goal 11 in providing tangible guidelines for the reality of urban design and planning practices. Furthermore, the relationship between local stakeholders and other institutional bodies is not well defined in Goal 11. The paper does not aim to address all indicators of Goal 11 targets, but rather explores contextual circumstances that might not fit within the overgeneralization of Goal 11 by including different involved parties. This process is conducted by superimposing the data associated with different targets and is often difficult to overlap. Therefore, the study aimed to utilize a Multi-Criteria Evaluation (AHP in this case) suitable for exploring a goal while addressing a multitude of data sources.
