Journal of the planner and development

This paper presents a detailed overview of the historical development and current state of accuracy assessment in land cover mapping, specifically within the field of Remote Sensing of the Environment over the past two decades. It underscores the pivotal role accuracy assessment plays in refining land cover mapping techniques, stressing the significance of high-quality reference data, sampling methodologies, and accuracy metrics.
Experience shows that urban expansion causes degradation of agricultural land, vegetation and water bodies. This urban sprawl contributes to many urban environmental problems such as poor air quality, rising temperatures and poor water quality.
Accuracy assessment techniques have undergone enhancements to bolster their scientific robustness, resulting in a more stringent process. The collective body of research and practical applications has propelled accuracy assessment to a mature state.
This research aims to use the best approach to estimate and evaluate the accuracy of land use map classification based on the use of high-resolution satellite images.
Despite significant advancements, there remain avenues for improvement. This study identifies the necessity for improved documentation of accuracy assessment methodologies to bolster research endeavors. Moreover, as technological capabilities progress, new challenges emerge, such as the imperative to tackle the heightened capacity for extensive spatial and intensive temporal mapping of land cover. Addressing these challenges mandates the development of enhanced methodologies to effectively cope with them.
Also, This paper focused on a literature review of satellite image classification techniques and their methods.
We conclude from all this that the need to classify satellite images is essential to extract land use data to solve environmental problems and improve living conditions.

In light of the increasing challenges facing cities, flexible urban design has become one of the key tools to enhance urban areas' ability to adapt to social and environmental changes. Low-income neighborhoods suffer from planning issues that affect quality of life, necessitating the adoption of flexible strategies to address these problems.

The research problem is the rising social challenges in these neighborhoods due to the lack of flexibility in urban design, which exacerbates environmental, social, and economic issues. This study aims to analyze the role of flexible urban design as a strategy to address these challenges and improve quality of life, with Al-Askari neighborhood in Najaf as a case study.
The research is based on the hypothesis that adopting flexible urban design principles can mitigate social challenges and enhance quality of life in low-income urban areas. To achieve this, a set of key indicators was derived from the theoretical framework, covering social, environmental, economic, and demographic dimensions. These indicators include, for example, the availability of flexible public spaces to promote social cohesion and the sustainability of natural resources to ensure urban development.
The study employed field analysis by surveying residents and local officials, alongside an assessment of the urban and social reality in the study area. The findings highlight the significance of participatory planning and the development of resilient infrastructure in achieving urban sustainability, which helps mitigate social and environmental challenges. This supports the study’s hypothesis and reinforces the need to apply flexible design strategies in similar urban contexts.

The accumulation of municipal solid waste (MSW) has become an escalating environmental and public health concern, particularly in developing countries such as Iraq. Landfills are nearing their full capacity, while formal waste management systems are still in the process of development. At the same time, the growing demand for energy presents an additional challenge to sustainability efforts. This study is based on the hypothesis that Waste-to-Energy (WtE) technologies can offer a Partial solution to both the waste crisis and energy shortages.
The primary objective of this research is to examine global experiences with WtE technologies and assess their potential applicability in Iraq. The study explores various WtE methods, including incineration, gasification, anaerobic digestion, and landfill gas recovery, emphasizing their environmental and economic benefits.
Drawing from case studies in China, Germany, Sweden, and Japan, the research highlights key elements of success such as supportive legal frameworks, balanced risk-sharing mechanisms, and active community involvement. In contrast, Iraq faces several obstacles, including inconsistent waste composition, regulatory gaps, and limited financial capacity.
The findings suggest that the successful adoption of WtE technologies in Iraq requires integrated policy reforms, sustainable financing strategies, institutional strengthening, and effective public-private partnerships. These measures are essential to ensure that WtE becomes a practical and sustainable component of Iraq’s future waste and energy management strategies

In light of the growing urban challenges faced by developing cities, particularly in Iraq, city marketing has emerged as a promising strategic tool that can be employed to achieve sustainable urban development. This paper aims to analyze the impact of city marketing strategies on fostering sustainable urban development in the city of Balad, by drawing insights from successful global experiences in this field. The study is based on the hypothesis that the marketing strategies adopted in global cities such as Barcelona, Amsterdam, Dubai, and AlUla can be adapted and applied within the local context of Balad in a way that contributes to promoting sustainable urban development. The research adopts a descriptive-analytical methodology grounded in the review of relevant literature and previous studies, in addition to a comparative case study approach to analyze urban marketing strategies in the four selected cities and extract applicable lessons. The findings indicate that adopting urban marketing strategies based on local identity, promoting place branding, and activating community participation can significantly enhance the city's attractiveness and improve its quality of life. The study recommends developing a localized city marketing strategy for Balad, built upon its cultural, religious, touristic, and social assets, in order to achieve the goals of sustainable urban development.

Desertification is one of the most serious environmental challenges facing the world in the modern era. It represents a direct threat to natural resources and significantly impacts economic and social development in many countries, particularly those located in arid and semi-arid regions. Desertification is defined as the degradation of land in arid regions due to natural factors such as climate change, or human causes such as excessive land use, deforestation, overgrazing, and mismanagement of water resources.
Desertification has become an increasingly widespread phenomenon across the world. Studies indicate that vast areas of agricultural land have been transformed into barren lands unsuitable for agriculture, leading to a decline in agricultural production, exacerbating poverty and hunger, and increasing migration rates from affected areas. Hence, it is important to raise awareness of this phenomenon, investigate its causes and effects, and identify ways to combat it through effective plans to preserve environmental balance and ensure sustainable development.

Multistory residential buildings are prominent visual elements that may be transformed by their location and design into distinctive urban landmarks that are harmoniously integrated into the existing urban fabric or, on the contrary, may contribute to the production of visual distortion leading to a break in the urban horizon and loss of visual coherence with the surrounding environment, and the city of Baghdad has witnessed since the millennium clear transformations in its urban scene, as the vertical extension began to manifest in multiple areas, especially in its vital center, which includes a number of buildings that predominate residential character, hence the research issue emerged on. The research hypothesis is that the introduction of these projects without adhering to planning and design standards leads to confusion and distortion in the visual and sensory perception of the urban scene. The research aims to understand the relationship between Multistory residential projects and the urban scene, increase planning awareness in choosing the locations of these projects, and develop vacant spaces in an integrated manner that supports urban and urban integration. Adopting a methodology based on the descriptive, analytical and field approach, the research concluded that the absence of appropriate architectural treatments, moving away from the principle of human scale, and weak integration of sustainability concepts and visual identity are all factors that negatively affect the perception and quality of the urban scene. The research recommended the need to develop a holistic vision to integrate residential vertical projects into the urban fabric while adopting design and planning standards based on visual perception and human scale.

This study aims to analyze and demonstrate the environmental role of green spaces, particularly in reducing the carbon footprint in the city of Al-Kut, by evaluating the relationship between vegetation cover and greenhouse gas emissions resulting from urban activities. The importance of the study lies in highlighting the environmental potential of green areas as natural and effective tools for absorbing carbon dioxide and improving air quality, especially in light of rapid urban expansion and increasing climatic pressures facing Iraqi cities.. Remote sensing data were utilized through the Google Earth Engine platform to calculate the Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) during the period from 2003 to 2023, and to analyze the spatial and temporal changes in vegetation carbon absorption efficiency. Additionally, the carbon footprint of the city for the year 2023 was calculated using the IPCC methodology and emission factors related to energy and fuel consumption. The results revealed that the improvement in NDVI and GPP indices over the past two decades positively reflected the environmental absorption efficiency, despite increasing urbanization pressures. The study showed that the total carbon dioxide emissions in Al-Kut city for the year 2023 exceeded 1,184,290 tons of CO₂-equivalent, while the amount of carbon absorbed by vegetation was estimated at approximately 469,693 tons, highlighting a major environmental gap that necessitates effective planning interventions.. It also recommends adopting vegetation carbon indicators in local planning policies

The study explores how the principles and practices of a circular economy can help reduce the amount of waste in the environment and attain sustainability in Iraq. It examines the awareness of people on the environment, their level of knowledge and behavior, the influence of the infrastructure and local policies, and the identification of the most notable barriers and motivators to implementation. The research utilized a descriptive-analytic methodology in the questionnaire that was given to a sample of 270 people. The analysis of data was done on correlation coefficients and regression. The findings revealed excessively good and positive relationships between the knowledge of the circular economy, good environmental practices, and infrastructure evaluation. The outcomes also showed that there was a moderate negative correlation of the level of awareness and environmental practices and obstacles as well which mean that the minimization of obstacles is part of the process of encouraging the adoption of the circular economy. The regression analysis showed that awareness and infrastructure were the two variables that had the greatest impact on the environmental behavior that explained 96.6 and 96.3 percentage of the variance, respectively, and obstacles affected it negatively. The research suggests the establishment of environmental infrastructure, increasing the level of community awareness, and mobilizing supportive legislation and policies. The paper finds that one of the entry points to the reduction of waste and the creation of long-term environmental and economic sustainability in Iraq is the adoption of an integrated approach to the circular economy.