**7. Discussion and conclusions**

Urban sprawl suitability under the various scenarios was applied to Van City, which devel‐ oped fast in the last decade in Turkey. The purpose of the study was not only to focus on the Van City growth options but also to present how we can apply various scenarios in GIS interface for a land-use decision-making process using an objective weighting technique based on an indicator data set such as urban change in time.


**Table 5.** Areal diversity of the urban suitability categories of scenarios.

Three different scenarios were cross-checked as economic, ecologic, and sustainable using seven factors, which have significant effects on urban sprawl. These factors were diversified according to the regional differences or data accessibilities for urban growth suitability [30]. As a result of the study, restrictive areas covered too much places in the ecological scenario. The highest suitability areal cover was recorded in the economic scenario. On the contrary, in the sustainable scenario, development areas were defined ideally for the future urban sprawl of Van City. Van City changed almost 5700 ha in 13 years, and it needs a minimum of 5000 ha area for the next 10 years according to the population increase. In the sustainable scenario, very high suitable lands almost satisfied this demand. Also, high suitable areas were enough for the long future development (**Table 5**).

In general, very high and high suitable areas were located in north, east, and south parts of the city. In the city development plan, a belt highway is under construction from the north to south parts of the city shaped as a half-circle. In this extent, heavy industrial places are located at the north side of the city and it will improve to near the belt highway in the northern side. These regions are available for industrial development. The south part of the city started to develop after the earthquakes in 2011. According to the ground surveys (ground stability map could not be used in this study because of data accessibility problem), this is available for urban sprawl without taking any additional construction preventions for built-up area growth. The east part of the city developed so fast after the 2000s. Particularly, immigrants from the rural areas and other cities settled in the east part of the city. Unfortunately, the east part is a good sample for unplanned urbanization, so this part will probably be within the scope of urban transformation in future. Therefore, urban sprawl in this region will be less than expected.

In conclusion, GIS-based MCE techniques are efficient to evaluate the land-use options because of geographic interface and scenario application abilities. Also, this visual ability can be integrated with public participation in weighting or decision-making stages. In this study, RS data were used to define fuzzy rules and weights of factors using a categorical diversity of changed areas in the factors. This approach was provided objective weighting by an ideal data set. This ideal data set was not an ideal city development, but finally the city developed on these areas in time and priority of the factors can be organized according to past urban development. For the ideal urban growth, scenarios were tested. Sustainable urban sprawl areas were detected comparing the ecological and economic scenarios and urbanization demand in the future. As a result of the decisions, a sustainable scenario was developed and applied to Van City considering sustainable life quality, urbanization demands, and nature protection.
