Multicriteria sustainability evaluation of urban heritage

Assessing urban heritage in historic cities remains challenging where building decay, urban pressure and difficult-to-regulate tourism dynamics intersect. Monetary approaches reflect market benefits but inadequately account for non-market values, conservation limits, and the complexity of inhabited historic fabric. This paper operationalises a sustainability-based multicriteria decision-support framework, integrating economic dimensions, for the tourist route of the Casbah of Algiers. The model is formalised as a reproducible protocol integrating five dimensions: heritage, environmental (urban), social, economic and institutional, weighted through structured questionnaires administered to ten (10) qualified experts in economics, sociology, environment, heritage, and administrative management. A hierarchical structuring (AHP) is complemented by a network-based modelling of interdependencies (ANP), implemented in SuperDecisions. The results generate weights, final priorities and a limit matrix, supporting a structured interpretation of vulnerabilities and value patterns at the route scale.