With increasing focus on more nuanced aspects of quality of life, the phenomenon of urban visual pollution has been progressively gaining attention from researchers and policy makers, especially in the developed world. However, the subjectivity and complexity of assessing visual pollution in urban settings remain a challenge, especially given the lack of robust and reliable methods for quantification of visual pollution. This paper presents a novel systematic approach for the development of a robust Visual Pollution Assessment (VPA) tool. A key feature of our methodology is explicit and systematic incorporation of expert and public opinion for listing and ranking Visual Pollution Objects (VPOs). Moreover, our methodology deploys established empirical complex decision-making techniques to address the challenge of subjectivity in weighting the impact of individual VPOs. The resultant VPA tool uses close-ended options to capture the presence and characteristics of various VPOs on a given node. Based on these inputs, it calculates a point based visual pollution scorecard for the observation point. The performance of the VPA tool has been extensively tested and verified at various locations in Pakistan. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such tool, both in terms of quantitative robustness and broad coverage of VPOs. Our VPA tool will help regulators in assessing and charting visual pollution in a consistent and objective manner. It will also help policy makers by providing an empirical basis for gathering evidence; hence facilitating evidence-based and evidence-driven policy strategies, which are likely to have significant impact, especially in the developing countries.

Urban visual pollution is increasingly affecting the built-up areas of the rapidly urbanizing planet. Outdoor advertisements are the key visual pollution objects affecting the visual pollution index and revenue generation potential of a place. Current practices of uninformed and uncontrolled outdoor advertising (especially billboards) impairs effective control of visual pollution in developing countries. Improving this can result in over 20% reduction of visual pollution. This article presents a spatial decision support system (SDSS) to facilitate all the stakeholders (development control authorities, advertisers, billboard owners, and the public) in balancing the optimal positioning of billboards under the governing regulations. In terms of its technical implementation, SDSS is based on well-known geospatial open source technologies and uses an analytical hierarchy process AHP-inspired approach in spatial decision-making. It can help users through its category-specific user interface to identify potential sites to position new billboards and the selection of boards from existing sites based on a wide variety of characteristics. The observations of all stakeholders have been recorded through panel feedback to assess the system’s initial effectiveness. The proposed system has been found functional in identifying hot spots for the focused management and exploration of the best suitable sites for new billboards. So, it helps the advertising agencies, urban authorities, and city councils in better planning and management of existing billboard locations to optimize revenue and improve urban aesthetics. The system can be replicated in other countries irrespective of spatial boundaries by incorporating jurisdictional rules and regulations.

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Since 2007, more than fifty percent of our planet’s population is living in urban areas. In the coming decade, the rate of urbanization will be fastest in Asia and Africa. Within South Asian countries, urbanization has attained its fastest pace in Pakistan. Urban planners and agencies in Pakistan have tried various spatial plan making solutions to manage urban areas, but none have given the desired results. After a 20% increase in declared urban areas within last two decades, urban planners and policy makers are looking for a more innovative and realistic spatial planning solution, which could adjust to the uncertainties and complexities of real world. This research uses a mixed method approach comprising a two phased survey of professional planners, analyzed through the selective lexicon approach to document planners’ opinions about the reasons behind the poor performance and conformance of spatial plans. This study documents the planners’ understanding of the contemporary concept of ‘scenario planning’. To explore the solution, this paper presents a semi-systematic review of the literature on the application of the ‘scenario method in urban spatial planning’. As a result of this research, a comprehensive digital inventory of all spatial plans ever made in Pakistan has been developed. It has been found that 83% of the urban settlements in Pakistan are growing without a spatial plan and require immediate attention. Furthermore, in terms of the plan making process, twenty-seven major factors contributing to the failure of past plans have been identified and categorized under seven distinct plan making stages. Finally, a new process of spatial plan-making has been proposed, which is the fusion of scenario planning and the traditional plan-making process, backed by digital planning tools. In an era of smart cities and digitization, it is expected that the advancements in scenarios planning, coupled with a new data portal, will assist in addressing the implementation gap in practice, and result in more comprehensive data-driven spatial plans.