This study aims at identifying the suitable lands for urban development in Bandar
Abbas city based on its real world use regarding specific criteria and sub-criteria. The
city of Bandar Abbas is considered as the most important commercial and economic
city of Iran. It is also considered as one of the major cities of Iran which has played a
pivotal role in the country's development and progress in recent years especially after
the end of Iran-Iraq war owing to its embracing the country's main commercial ports.
This process has caused the immigration rate into the city to rise significantly over the
past 20 years. Thus, the development of the city is meanwhile considered as a high
priority. Bandar Abbas city does not have a rich capacity for growth and development
due to its special geographical situation being located in coastal border. Among the
limitations placed in the city's development way, natural limitations (heights and sea
shore) in the northern and southern parts of the city and structural limitations (military
centers) in the east and west sides of the city may be referred. Therefore, identifying the
suitable lands for urban development within Bandar Abbas city limits is becoming an
essential priority. Therefore, different quantitative and qualitative criteria have been
studied in order to select and identify these lands. The structures of qualitative criteria
for most parts involve ambiguities and vagueness. This leads us to use Fuzzy logic in
this study as a natural method for determining the solutions for problems of Multicriteria
decision making (MCDM). In the current research, a combination of MCDM
methods has been presented for analysis. To assignee weights of the criteria Fuzzy
AHP (analytic hierarchy process) is used for land selection and Fuzzy TOPSIS (method
for order priority by similarity to ideal solution) is utilized to choose the alternative that
is the most appropriate through these criteria weights. The sensitivity analysis of the
results is included in the research.