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Sustainable development is a new concept with various perspectives in communities. Cities and rural areas are in the core of attention for developing. This study focuses on rural areas. Stability of building structures is so important in villages and rural areas. One sustainable development criterion of villagers is suitable housing. In this research, both new and traditional technologies are investigated for developing rural areas. The most part of Iran is in desert areas. This research investigates these areas in Iran as a case study. Two MCDM methods is applied as a new hybrid model in this research, at first SWARA is applied for weighting criteria and then COPRAS is applied for evaluating five selected building structures in term of these regions climate. Authors propose that this research can be useful as a framework for using in other regions in all around the world. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.