Applicability of Land-Use Models for Sustainable Urban Planning: A Review

Rapid urban growth has caused several urban issues and generated new challenges and pressures in sustainable urban planning. Land use and land cover distribution are vital in sustainable urban planning. Therefore, it is necessary to capture land-use changes with urban planning initiatives to achieve sustainable urban development. This paper reviews the literature on land-use models, their evolution, modeling approaches, different stakeholder perspectives, applications, and applicability in local-level urban planning. This review studied 22 land-use models with five practical applications in sustainable urban planning. The applicability of land-use models in local-level urban planning was evaluated considering five criteria: spatial scale and resolution, temporal scale, model implementation, and model license. Based on the performed multicriteria evaluations, the 22 selected land-use models are classified into three categories—highly applicable, moderately applicable, and marginally applicable. The findings suggest that a hybrid approach, integrating GIS, machine learning, and cellular automata, is necessary to address the tradeoffs between model applicability and resource requirements while effectively capturing the multidimensional aspects of sustainability. Additionally, the study highlights the need for open platforms to enable model comparison and feedback, thereby improving the applicability and effectiveness of land-use models in local-level urban planning.