Smarter and Greener Cities After COVID‐19: An Integrated Decision‐Making Framework to Prioritize Investment Alternatives

ABSTRACT

Locking down cities to curb the transmission of coronavirus brought the global economy to a grinding halt. Cities are like engines of growth;when they stop, so does the growth. Therefore, it becomes paramount to build cities that continue to function and do not collapse amidst any crisis. Since economic recovery is underway, this paper examines priority areas for investment to expedite recovery and build back stronger cities. These areas are evaluated based on their contribution to revitalizing public health, economic, social, energy, and environmental sectors. For the analysis, analytical network process (ANP) and fuzzy‐VIKOR are applied. ANP obtains the relative importance of sectors and their respective critical factors after solving a complex relationship among them. The economic sector has the highest weight of 25.8% among the five sectors, while job creation has the highest weight of 10.3% among the fifteen factors. Fuzzy‐VIKOR is used to evaluate different areas and it is found that renewable energy has a greater contribution to the sustainable recovery of major sectors and the long‐term aim of building inclusive green and resilient cities. These insights shall contribute to the conversations already ongoing among city governments, urban planners, civil society organizations, and city dwellers seeking practical solutions to unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic. The economic sector is the most crucial area for immediate recovery. Job creation is discovered to be one of the most important driving factors for stimulating recovery following COVID‐19. Renewable energy is shown to be the best investment strategy that may support sustainable economic recovery in cities, reviving the economy and generating job opportunities.