Integrated urban-construction planning framework for slum upgrading projects

Slums are areas of population concentrations developed in the absence of physical planning and lack access to life essentials. Slums represent major national challenges in countries where they exist, especially developing countries. Various intervention strategies can be adopted to upgrade and/or replace slums, but are often faced with serious construction challenges, such as lack of access to sites and poor terrain conditions. Moreover, during the execution of slum upgrading projects, resident families can experience significant social and economic disruptions. The objective of this paper is present an integrated urban-construction planning framework for slum upgrading projects. This framework incorporates participatory upgrading and is designed to achieve three important objectives, including (1) maximizing the benefits of slum upgrading projects by identifying and accelerating the delivery of urgent projects; (2) providing more accurate and practical estimates of upgrading projects costs and timelines, which enables controlling and minimizing the total projects costs and durations; and (3) minimizing the social and economic disruptions for resident families during construction. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the potential of the proposed framework and its core multiobjective optimization process.