Developing Policy Scenarios for Sustainable Urban Growth Management: A Delphi Approach

Abstract

In many parts of the world, a rapid urbanization process is taking place at an unprecedented scale, and its drastic impacts on societies and the environment are evident. To combat the externalities of such rapid, and to a degree uncontrolled, development, many cities around the globe introduced various urban growth management policies. However, policy making-to provide sustainable outcomes, while generating growth opportunities-has been a daunting task for urban administrators. To ease the task, scenario-based planning methods are introduced to produce alternative visions for managing urban growth in sustainable ways by incorporating various socio-environmental issues. However, even though modelling urban growth and associated impacts based on these scenarios have emerged to strengthen and quantify the future of urban policies and related planning actions, this process has a number of glitches. Major issues include the uncertainties associated with the selection of suitable methods to generate scenarios, identify indicators to be used to assess scenarios, evaluate scenarios to prioritize for policy formulation, and assess the impacts of policy scenarios. This paper aims to address the challenge of developing suitable policy scenarios for sustainable urban growth. As for the methodological approach, the study undertakes a thorough review of the literature and current practices, and conducts a two-round Delphi survey-involving experts from public, private and academic sectors specialized in the fields of urban planning, environmental planning, social planning, transportation modelling, and economic development. The expert driven policy scenarios are validated in a local context by comparing findings against the policy options as proposed in the South East Queensland Regional Plan 2017 (Australia). The findings offer valuable guidelines for planners, modellers, and policy makers in adopting suitable methods, indicators, and policy priorities, and thus, easing the daunting task of generating sustainable policy solutions.

Research as a Base for Sustainable Development of Universities: Using the Delphi Method to Explore Factors Affecting International Publishing among Vietnamese Academic Staff

“…The method was first developed by RAND Corporation in the 1960s to explore ideas and seek consensus among a panel of experts [35,36]. Nowadays, the method is widely used in a variety of sectors, such as nursing studies [37]; marketing [38]; tourism [39]; urban studies [40]; and education [41]. Given the exploratory nature of this study, using the Delphi method was an appropriate way to address the research goals.…”

Adapting Collaborative Approaches for Service Provision to Low-Income Countries: Expert Panel Results

“…Discussion and feedback were necessary to address inconsistencies and build a cohesive set of guidance; however, discussion introduces biases that influence decisions in group settings. The Delphi method [60][61][62][63] was selected to facilitate a panel of experts to discuss and prioritize key aspects of collaborative approaches for their application in low-income countries while also reducing group biases by allowing for anonymity over multiple rounds of rating with controlled feedback on panel opinions.…”

Developing Sustainable City Indicators for Cambodia through Delphi Processes of Panel Surveys

“…Delphi method had been used in many areas and can be used for any purpose requiring the use of committees [58][59][60][61][62]. Based on many studies, Sourani and Sohail (2015) presented Delphi as useful to (a) obtain accurate information that is unavailable, (b) handle complex problems that require more judgmental analysis, (c) define areas where there is considerable uncertainty and/or a lack of agreed knowledge or disagreement, (d) allow for combining fragmentary perspectives into a collective understanding, (e) model a real-world phenomenon involving a range of viewpoints and for which there is little established quantitative evidence, and (f) highlight topics of concern and assess uncertainty in a quantitative manner [63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77].…”

“…More recently, Delphi has been widely used to develop the criteria and indicators in many fields, especially in construction fields [56][57][58][59][60][61][62]; for example, Sourani and Sohail (2015) [63] used the Delphi technique to develop an agreed set of economic sustainability criteria that should be addressed in a procumbent strategy. Moreover, many studies [63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77] have showed that Delphi can be useful to (a) obtain accurate information that is unavailable, (b) handle complex Sustainability 2019, 11, 3166 3 of 32 problems that require more judgmental analysis, (c) define areas where there is considerable uncertainty and/or a lack of agreed knowledge or disagreement, (d) allow for combining fragmentary perspectives into a collective understanding, (e) model a real world phenomena involving a range of viewpoints and for which there is little established quantitative evidence, and (f) highlight topics of concern and assess uncertainty in a quantitative manner. In particular, based on the summary explained in Appendix A [78][79][80][81][82][83][84], this research accordingly chose the Delphi technique to develop sustainable city indicators (SCIs) for Cambodia through three-round panel surveys.…”