The land use situation in Kisumu municipality portrays a state of mixed and conflicting land uses. This has been attributed to improper land use allocation strategies, lack of appropriate spatial decision support systems coupled with ever competing land use needs. This study focus on assessing the suitability of urban land use allocation in the municipality through generation of GIS-based land use suitability maps that will enhance land use allocation in the municipality. The process considers multiple land use objectives, determines the amount of land required by each together with their environmental requirements. This was in view of the fact that the practice of urban land use allocation has all along been begged on economic factors devoid of environmental concerns which play a vital role for sustainable urban development.
Both spatial and non-spatial data was analyzed systematically through criteria formulation, multi-criteria evaluation and multi-objective land allocation processes to generate the land use allocation model from which land use suitability maps were derived. The decision-making tools incorporated within the Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) modules of ArcGIS and IDRISI for Windows were used. ( Khaemba W. 2012).
