Constructing and improving urban residential areas is an eternal critical subject in the process of the
whole urban development which is connected with a series of challenges and problems. During the past
decades, urban residential development has speed up extremely with massive population mobility in
cities. The purpose of this study is to propose an integrated approach for sustainability assessment of
urban residential development, considering sustainability indicators, housing equilibrium and building
visualization. Firstly based on merging DPSIR (Driving Forces, Pressure, State, Impact and Response)
framework and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the indicators were systematized for the sustainability
modeling. Due to the urban activities cause impacts not only on local level but also a broader scale,
a simulation model, using System Dynamics (SD) methodology, was structured to quantitatively investigate
the developmental tendency of the indicators. And then the estimated results were displayed in 2D
density maps in ArcGIS and 3D visualization in CityEngine. A real case study was presented for the
Stuttgart Region of the state of Baden-Württemberg in Southern Germany and its Plieningen district to
experience the usefulness and feasibility of the developed approach. The integration of GIS, SD model
and 3D visualization, called GISSD system here, can better explain the interaction and the variation of the
sustainability indicators for residential development. Hence it is able to support the Decision Maker to
view the sustainable level of urban residential areas more comprehensively.
2011 Elsevier Ltd.