The concept of urban public spaces is becoming more and more conceptualized as a key infrastructural component of urban development, which supports the development of sustainable cities rather than an isolated esthetic or recreational feature (Živković et al., 2019). The literature of contemporary urban design and planning stresses the fact that the public spaces are integrative spaces in which the environmental performance, social interaction, economic activity, and cultural expression overlap. Their quality, accessibility, and management have a direct impact on urban resilience, population health, and social equity, which makes public space one of the key elements of sustainable urban systems (Almahdy, 2020).

Based on sustainability, the public spaces are known to enhance the environmental performance based on climate responsive design, green infrastructure, and resource efficiency, and also serve to contribute to social cohesion and economic vitality (Carmona, 2021). Properly designed public spaces promote active movement, support daily social communication and improve place identification, thus strengthening personal well-being and the community life in the city. On the other hand, inadequately designed or disjointed public spaces tend to enhance social exclusion, decrease accessibility and diminish the effectiveness of larger sustainability programs.

The significance of the public space in the urban cities is particularly crucial in the context of the rapid urbanization when the urban growth strains the land, infrastructure and environmental resources even further. The open spaces in such environments must be diverse in terms of user groups and conflicting needs and adaptable to the changing social, economic, and climatic conditions (Carmona, 2021; Qi et al., 2024). This makes the conventional, form-oriented approaches of the design of the public space more complicated and demands more systematic frameworks that might evaluate different aspects of sustainability simultaneously.

One of the global sustainability agendas that highlight the importance of inclusive, safe, and accessible public spaces as a pillar of sustainable urban development is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 (McLeod et al., 2017). However, these frameworks do not provide much information on how to balance and focus on the various physical, social, economic, and governance-related aspects that characterize the performance of the public space in specific urban environments, even though they establish normative goals (McLeod et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2019). Subsequently, systematic evaluation methods are becoming more and more demanded by urban planners and decision-makers who need to convert general sustainability principles into context-specific design and planning priorities (Almujibah, 2021; Yang et al., 2019).

The SDG 11 (Sustainable Development Goal 11) of the United Nations that is bound to transform cities into inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable has become a new central point of modern urban planning and policy of the public space. This framework target 11.7 is concerned with the universal access to safe, inclusive, and accessible public and green spaces, particularly among the vulnerable groups such as women, children, older persons, and persons with disabilities (Mabuza, 2020). This objective highlights the increasing awareness that the public spaces are critical to attainment of social equity, environmental and urban resilience, and the quality of life (Cheshmehzangi et al., 2024). Despite the fact that SDG 11 presents a strong normative agenda, its suggestions are largely theoretical and policy-oriented rather than operational. The framework outlines the objectives that are wanted but offers limited directions on how cities must pay attention to desired sustainability objectives or how general principles can be transformed into local planning and design decisions (Cheshmehzangi et al., 2024; Dolley and Howes, 2024). As a result, urban officials are often left without the means of proper evaluation that would allow them to decide which of the public space characteristics such as mobility integration, climate responsiveness, capacity to control and economic sustainability, should be given precedence in the context of resource distribution and the implementation of the project (Dolley and Howes, 2024; Jian et al., 2020). This has especially been a challenge in the fast-growing cities where development pressures, climatic constraints, and institutional conditions make it difficult to affect the global sustainability agendas. Such situations, as seen in those cities as well as the rest of the Gulf region, involve the straightforward implementation of SDG 11 objectives without local contextualization, which result in generalized solutions that do not address local environmental, cultural, and governance conditions. In turn, there is an increasing demand of planning strategies that will still allow being aligned with global sustainability goals while allowing local interpretation and prioritization. To fill this gap, it is necessary to have well-organized decision-support systems with the power to transform the qualitative goals of SDG 11 into quantifiable, context-specific planning standards. Such frameworks can be useful in filling the gap between global policy agendas and the realities of local urban decision making by facilitating the systematic comparison and weighting of dimensions of sustainability. This supports the applicability of multi-criteria evaluation techniques in plan of public space and offers a conceptual base to the methodological approach that is taken in this study.

The process of planning sustainable public spaces entails a complicated web of interconnected and often competing goals. The urban decision-makers need to consider environmental performance, efficiency of mobility, social inclusion, economic viability, cultural continuity and institutional capacity at the same time. Such dimensions are hardly compatible with each other; they are trade-offs that need to be explicitly considered and ranked. With the increase in urbanization and diversification in cities, especially in fast urbanizing areas, the constraints of the intuitive and single-criterion methods of planning are becoming more and more evident (Nasef, 2017). In practice, the decisions of the public space planning are influenced by a variety of stakeholders who have different priorities, professional outlook, and influence levels. Although the principles of qualitative design and policy guidelines provide valuable direction, they may not have the analysis framework to facilitate clear and consistent decision making. This is particularly pronounced in situations whereby there is a dearth of empirical evidence or when key decisions in planning are pegged on expert-based judgments as is the case in the development of the public space.

The difficulty of the sustainability-oriented planning has resulted in increased interest in organized assessment techniques that can incorporate a variety of criteria into a logical decision model. Through such methods, the planners are in a position to evaluate the relative significance of various dimensions of sustainability systematically, clarify the trade-offs, and minimize ambiguity in the decision-making (Tavana et al., 2023). Instead of eliminating professional judgment, systematic methods of evaluation complement it by making assumptions clear and by assisting in rational comparison of alternatives. In this context, decision-support tools are vital in converting the sustainability objectives with wide scopes into implementation planning priorities. These tools can help close the gap between the normative policy objectives and realistic urban interventions by offering a clear and reproducible model of assessment of several criteria. There is a need to develop a structured assessment form on the methodological basis of implementing multi-criteria decision-making techniques in the planning of the public space, which is further discussed in the following sections.

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been extensively used as a multi-criteria decision-making tool in the research on urban sustainability and planning. Its flexibility to organize the complex decision problems in hierarchical form and the synthesis of qualitative expert judgments has rendered it especially appealing in assessing problems, which entail numerous and often competing criteria. Some of the applications of AHP in urban planning have been in land-use suitability analysis, prioritizing infrastructure investment, heritage conservation, urban regeneration and environmental management (Guarini et al., 2017). APH has often been used in research aimed at urban sustainability to combine the environmental, social and economic aspects into composite assessment models. These applications prove the efficiency of the method in explaining priority factors and aiding the transparent decision-making process. In the field of planning of the public space, AHP has found its application to evaluate the quality of the space, safety, accessibility, and environmental performance, frequently based on expert-based evaluations to inform the design and policy intervention (Castañon et al., 2025; Zhalehdoost and Taleai, 2025). Regardless of these contributions, the current applications of AHP have a number of limitations in the view of the integrated public space sustainability. Most research takes a sectoral approach and focuses on the specific elements, including land use, transport infrastructure, or heritage assets, instead of considering the multifunctional nature of the public spaces in terms of physical design, mobility systems, governance structures, and socio-economic processes. Moreover, transport connectivity is in most instances considered as a supporting or secondary determinant rather than as a core determinant of public space performance (Abdul et al., 2024; Yung et al., 2015).

Geographically, the AHP-based studies of urban sustainability have been done mostly in European and East Asian settings where climatic conditions, planning cultures and governance structures are very different to the Gulf cities (Güler, 2025; Özekenci, 2025). Little emphasis has been placed on the implementation of AHP in hot-arid, high-rate urban settings where thermal comfort, automobile dependency, and institutional coordination are decisive factors in the definition of the usability of the public spaces. This geographic gap restricts the applicability of the available structures to other cities like Al Khobar. The current research addresses these limitations by using AHP to consider the sustainability of the public space in the form of an integrated framework based on the peculiarities of a Gulf city. The study takes physical, economic, administrative, and social dimensions into one hierarchical model and specifically predicts the connectivity of transport and active mobility as major physical measures, extending past sectoral AHP applications. By so doing, it also leads to the methodological development of AHP in the context of planning the public space, and it also offers a context-sensitive method of decision support applicable in fast urbanizing cities that could be found in the same climate and institutional context.

Building on the conceptual robustness of the SDG and AHP, this study develops a Khobar-local public space planning sustainability assessment model with four dimensions: physical, social, economic, and administrative, incorporating sub-criteria drawn from worldwide literature and local urban experience. Through the application of AHP for this well-organized hierarchy, this study will determine the priorities to be tackled in the creation and regeneration of public spaces in Khobar. This would help urban decision-makers utilize their resources more effectively, respond to the needs of different user groups, and harmonize their projects in line with international sustainability agendas and regional development strategies.

The urban public spaces can be viewed as systems of a complex nature, which is determined by the interplay of physical form and mobility networks, governance structures, economic activity and social dynamics (Carmona, 2021). When cities are growing fast, especially in climatic stress-prone cities and cities with complex institutions, sustainability of the public space cannot be evaluated by means of single-dimensional and design-focused methods. Rather, it needs a unified structure with the ability to represent several sustainability aspects and explain their overall effect on the performance of the public space (Karwa and Chauhan, 2025).

The conceptual framework is based on the perception of sustainability as a multidimensional construct (environmental, social, economic, and institutional) in accordance with the global frameworks, including the Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11) formulated by the United Nations (Vaidya and Chatterji, 2019; Van der Waldt, 2024). Although SDG 11 sets normative goals of inclusive, safe, resilient, and accessible public space, it lacks the manner in which the normative goals need to be prioritized and operationalized in particular urban conditions (Monaco, 2024). Such a constraint requires a systematic conceptual framework that transforms general sustainability principles into assessable aspects that can be used to make decisions at the local level. The framework categorizes the sustainability in the public space into four dimensions, which are interrelated, namely, physical, economic, administrative, and social. The physical aspect includes spatial organization, environmental performance, climate responsiveness, and, most importantly, connectivity with the public transport and active mobility systems. This dimension indicates the underpinning of urban form and urban infrastructure in the development of accessibility, usability, and environmental resilience. The economic aspect deals with the ability of the public spaces to sustain the local economic activity, job opportunities, diversity of services and long-term value generation. The administrative aspect represents the governance-specific issues, such as policy design, institutional alignment, investment, and long-term management ability. Lastly, the social aspect is concerned with inclusiveness, safety, comfort, sociality and cultural identity where social spaces are considered places of daily social life.

These dimensions are not perceived as independent or hierarchical in a causal sense, the dimensions are rather analytically different but mutually dependent aspects of sustainable planning of the public space. The framework is formulated as a decision-support structure, which allows systematizing a comparative method and prioritization of sustainability standards instead of creating a determinate relationship between variables. This distinction is essential since the study has no aim to predict the behavioral outcomes but assist in making informed planning decisions in the conditions of complexity and uncertainty.

In order to operationalize this conceptual framework, the study use the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a multi-criterion decision-making tool. AHP can be especially well fitted into this framework since it enables complex planning issues to be broken down into hierarchical parts and enables the incorporation of expert judgment in all the different dimensions of sustainability. The framework allows the evaluation of relative importance to be done in a transparent way by organizing the four dimensions and the corresponding criteria in a hierarchical model and explicitly recognizes trade-offs among conflicting objectives. In the current research, expert knowledge plays a central role in contextualization of the conceptual framework to the particular circumstances of Al Khobar. The input of experts is employed to narrow down criteria, evaluate relative priorities, and make sure that it fits the local climatic, cultural, and institutional realities. The resulting framework is therefore an intermediary between global sustainability agendas and localized planning practice, which is a structured framework on which AHP is applied to examine sustainable public space design in a rapidly developing Gulf city (Figure 1).

This research employs a systematic and organized methodological framework to determine, evaluate and rank sustainability requirements of designing the public spaces in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Khobar is a city with the strongest development in the Eastern Province and with unique urban features due to the accelerated population growth, the lack of green infrastructure, and the growing need in inclusive and robust common space (Qwaider et al., 2025) (Figure 2). All these circumstances render Khobar a relevant case to discuss the implementation of sustainability-oriented planning schemes. The analysis clearly considers the local contextual variables, such as climatic conditions like excessive heat, transport infrastructure, and mobility patterns, socio-cultural values (e.g., gender-sensitive and family-oriented public space), and economic development goals associated with tourism and community-based enterprises. With the introduction of these local considerations and international principles of sustainability, the methodology makes the proposed framework globally informed and locally responsive.

This study uses a mixed-methods, decision-support research design to assess and rank sustainability criteria of designing the public space in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The methodology combines qualitative expertise with quantitative multi-criteria analysis in order to tackle the complexity of sustainable urban planning. The study is explicitly presented as a decision-support exercise, instead of trying to make causal predictions or make decisions using behavioral models, to organize expert knowledge, clarifying trade-offs, and making transparent planning decisions. Given the multidimensional nature of the sustainability of the public space (physical, economic, administrative, and social), the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was chosen as the main methodological instrument. AHP is especially appropriate in situations where planning decisions are based on competing criteria, limited empirical data, and depend on professional judgment, as it is a common case in the context of planning the public space.

The conceptual framework was used to develop a hierarchical decision structure, which formed the methodological process. The general objective of the hierarchy was formulated as prioritization of sustainability requirements of the design of the public space in Al Khobar. The goal was further broken down into four key criteria, namely, physical, economic, administrative, and social, which represent the multidimensional concept of sustainability as explained in the literature and aligned with SDG 11 principles. All main criteria were operationalized with the help of a group of sub-criteria determined during the extensive review of the literature and optimized with the help of the experts. This measure made certain that the hierarchy reflected both global sustainability frameworks and local urban conditions, including climatic limitations, movement patterns, governmental frameworks, and socio-cultural considerations of Al Khobar. This hierarchy gave the analytical basis of the AHP application.

The expert judgment is a key component of AHP-based studies (Frish et al., 2025; Grošelj et al., 2024); hence, the expert selection was critically considered. The purposive sampling criterion was the selection of the participants according to professional relevance, expertise, and experience in the sphere directly connected with urban planning and development of the public space. The panel of experts included urban planners, architects, transport and sustainability experts, and academic researchers. Experts needed to possess at least 5 years of professional or academic experience in urban planning, sustainability, transport planning, or public space design in order to make informed and reliable judgments. This level is consistent with the conventional practice in the AHP literature, which emphasizes expertise rather than sample size when expert-based judgment is used. The number of participants who filled the AHP survey is 32, which is appropriate considering the same AHP usage in urban sustainability studies. Although no statistical representativeness is stated in the study, the diversity of professional backgrounds in the study was carefully chosen so as to include a variety of different views of planning and minimize the predominance of one disciplinary perspective. However, the use of expert judgment inevitably leads to subjectivity, which is also admitted as a methodological weakness.

Data collection was conducted in two phases. The sustainability criteria found in the literature were reviewed (Diaz-Balteiro et al., 2020; Kraus and Proff, 2021), validated, and refined in the first stage through semi-structured expert consultations. Professionals were requested to evaluate the relevance, clarity, and contextual aptness of the suggested criteria for planning the public space in Al Khobar. The results of this step were used to shape the ultimate form of the AHP hierarchy and make sure that it was based on the realities of local planning and not on just theory. The AHP questionnaire was created in the second stage, which was based on the finalized hierarchy. The pairwise comparisons of criteria and sub-criteria were performed by asking the experts to complete a nine-point scale created by Saaty, which implied the relative importance of one element compared to another (Cheng and Siow, 2022). The questionnaire was administered electronically, allowing participants ample time to make the comparisons independently and thoughtfully.

The study takes a direct recognition of the fact that expert judgment, criterion selection, and hierarchical structuring all affect the results of AHP. Although consistency checks assist in making sure that things are logically consistent, it does not remove subjectivity or epistemological doubt. Instead of considering this a weakness, the study considers subjectivity as a natural and open aspect of decision-support modeling in complicated planning situations. To mitigate potential bias, the study incorporated experts with varied professional experiences and depended on structured pairwise comparison as opposed to unstructured elicitation of opinions. Nevertheless, there was no sensitivity analysis done to test the strength of the findings in different weighting conditions. This is acknowledged to be a methodological limitation and constitutes a significant research opportunity in future studies.

Participation in the study was voluntary, and the experts were notified of the objectives and the intended use of their contribution in the study. No personal or identifying data was gathered and answers were anonymized in the analysis. The study followed the ethical research procedures of expert-based consultation and academic analysis.

The research methodology is designed to support context sensitive decision making rather than producing generalizable findings across the board. Results are localized to the urban, climatic, and institutional setting of Al Khobar and need to be interpreted accordingly. Although AHP offers a structured and transparent prioritization, its findings can only be perceived as decision-supportive inputs rather than definitive prescriptions for public space design.

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) survey involved 50 experts, 32 of whom responded to the pairwise-comparison questionnaire. The expert respondents were from five professional areas that were pertinent to planning and sustainability of the public space. Table 2 provides an overview of the number of invited and responding experts by category of professional. The highest percentage of respondents was represented by urban planners (28.1%), then architects (25.0%), sustainability officers (18.8%), transport experts (15.6%), and academic researchers (12.5%).

The first level of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) considered the relative priority of the four key dimensions of sustainability, namely: Physical, Economic, Administrative, and Social. The relative priority weights of the main sustainability dimensions are reported in Table 3. The findings show that the Physical dimension had the highest priority weight of 43.1% then the Economic dimension (22.0%), the administrative dimension (18.5), and the social dimension (16.4). All consistency ratios were less than the acceptable level of 0.10, which shows that there were sound expert judgments on the main-criteria level.

The first level of the AHP hierarchy had the highest overall priority weight (43.1%) on the Physical dimension. This dimension was evaluated on nine sub-criteria. Table 4 shows the normalized local weights of the physical sub-criteria in the physical dimension, the global weights of them, and their consistency ratios. Figure 3 shows the allocation of local weights of the physical sub-criteria. The findings show that the most local priority was given to the preservation of the cultural and historical assets (14.4%), then connectivity with transport and active mobility (12.6%), and climate-appropriate green infrastructure (12.1%). Other sub-criteria that are highly ranked in terms of physical are efficient use of energy and water resources (11.7%) and climate responsive comfort design (11.3%). The local priorities were moderate in the provision of multifunctional public activities (11.0%), clear spatial organization (10.0%), and compliance with the rules of planning and safety (9.1%), and adaptive design flexibility (7.8%).

Economic dimension was the second at the first level of the AHP hierarchy with a weight of 22.0%. This dimension had three sub-criteria. Table 5 shows the normalized local weights of the economic sub-criteria in the economic dimension, their global weights and the ratios of consistency. Figure 4 shows the distribution of the local weights of the economic sub-criteria. The findings show that the support of the local economy and employment received the highest local priority (46.4%), then there was tourism attraction (34.1%), and service diversity (19.5%). Supporting the local economy and employment was also the highest when it comes to global weights (10.2%), then tourism attraction (7.5%), and diversity in services (4.3%). All consistency ratio of the economic sub-criteria was lower than the acceptable level of 0.10, which was a sign of reliable expert judgments.

The Administrative dimension had a total weight of 18.5% in the first level of the AHP hierarchy. This dimension was assessed on three sub-criteria. Table 6 shows the normalized local weights of the administrative sub-criteria to the administrative dimension, their corresponding global weights and consistency ratios. The distribution of the local weights on the administrative sub-criteria is shown in Figure 5. The findings reveal that the local priority was the greatest towards the protection of public space (42.7%), then came investment and incentive mechanisms (31.4%), and finally the stakeholder coordination (25.9%). Public space protection policies occupied the first place in terms of global weights (7.9%), then investment and incentive mechanisms (5.8%) and stakeholder coordination (4.8%). The consistency ratios were all below the acceptable level of 0.10, which means reliable expert judgments.

At the lowest level of the AHP hierarchy, the social dimension was given a total priority of 16.4%. This dimension was evaluated in six sub-criteria. Table 7 shows the normalized local weight of the social sub-criteria in the social dimension, the global weight of the sub-criteria, and the consistency ratio. Figure 6 shows how the weights of the local weights were distributed in the social sub-criteria. According to the results, the safety of all user groups received the highest local priority (39.0%), social interaction and engagement (26.2%), and comfort and psychological well-being (15.2%). Among the global weights, the safety of all user groups (6.4%), social interaction and engagement (4.3%), and comfort and psychological well-being (2.5%) were the top ones. All consistency ratios were less than the acceptable level of 0.10 which shows reliable expert judgments.

To determine the reliability of expert judgments at all levels of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) hierarchy, consistency ratios (CRs) were computed at each pairwise comparison matrix. Table 8 provides an overview of the CR values for the key criteria and sub-criteria in each sustainability dimension. The reported consistency ratios were lower than the recommended value of 0.10, indicating acceptable consistency of expert judgment across all dimensions.

All sub-criteria were prioritized to allow a cross-dimensional comparison of sustainability priorities, with all the sub-criteria prioritized by their global weights, which were computed as a product of normalized local weights and the corresponding main sustainability dimension weights. Figure 7 shows the top 10 sustainability sub-criteria that have the highest global weight. The findings show that support of the local economy and employment was the top overall (10.2%), then came the public space protection policies (7.9%), and finally the tourism attraction (7.5%). Social and physical criteria were also among the leading in the top rankings, such as safety of all user groups (6.4%), protection of cultural and historical resources (6.21%). The other high-ranking sub-criteria were mostly connected with transport connectivity, climate-sensitive design, and environmental resource efficiency.