Regeneration towards suitability: A decision-making framework for determining urban regeneration mode and strategies

Urban regeneration has become a popular research topic globally against the critical challenges that cities face with the decay of urban function, urban fabric, and residents living condition. However, it is the proper decision-making on urban regeneration mode and strategies to bring the long-term effectiveness of urban regeneration, no matter how much efforts and resources are devoted. This study introduces a “two-step” decision-making framework for determining the suitable urban regeneration mode and strategies. The decision-making variables are mobilised to delineate the status-quo decay of the local territory across the facets of sustainable performance and physical conditions, thus the most suitable regeneration mode can be designed (step 1). On top of the regeneration mode design, the most suitable urban regeneration strategies can be further tailored by considering the regeneration constraint factors including the requests for historical and cultural conservation, government financial capacity and previous regeneration experiences (step 2). The proposed decision-making framework is proven effective via the case study of nine districts of Chongqing municipality in China. The framework is instrumental for assisting urban governors to identify the most critical issues that need to be addressed, and to tailor suitable mode and strategies for implementing urban regeneration programs in order to tackle the decay challenges and revitalise their urban territory. Via enabling the effective integration between the resources within a city and rationalising the investment allocation, the introduced decision-making framework is effective for the overall planning and (re)development at city level.