Enhanced Economic Typology for Spatial Economic Policy

This paper tries to actively contribute to the discussion concerning spatial planning and related policies being frequently criticised for their poor ability to accommodate economic dynamics, resulting in tension between spatial and economic development and inefficient planning decisions or instruments. Considering the importance of the economy and its fundamental role in our society, in addition to the lack of knowledge about what the word economy really means and how it is organised in a territory, we strongly believe that it should also be deeply studied and understood by planners and policy makers. In our previous papers we defined some instruments to use to fill this existing gap in knowledge. The first was economic activities mapping, consisting of an attempt of auditing and classifying economic activities in a given area (Giaretta & Zaman, 2017). Although this led to some interesting results, its use as a tool for the definition of the spatial distribution of economic activities or for the comparison of different economic areas,proved to be complicated. Therefore, in a later stage, two new versions of the typology of areas with economic activities were elaborated, in which we tried to divide a real territory into different types of existing economic fabrics. The first version, was based on more subjective criteria, using generally known planning concepts, such as city centres, core shopping centres, access roads, industrial areas and so on, to delimit several economic areas (Gruijthuijsen et al., 2018). The second version was based on more objective criteria, such as the combinations of the mapping data and the proximity between economic activities(Giaretta, Pennincx, De Mulder, Zaman, 2018). The second version turned out to be more interesting, as it really showed economic structures and patterns from an economic perspective, to which other layers, such as housing, could be added. Indeed, the existing economic fabric is not only about shopping streets and industrial areas.It follows residential patterns, creating areas in which economy, intended not only as services or facilities but also as industry and production, is mixed with housing. This creates a set of area types that are rarely defined or even considered by planners and politicians. Therefore, this second version was further elaborated, and we will explain the results in this paper (section 3 to 5). Finally, this last version gave us the possibility to translate it into possible market segments (section 6 and conclusion). First, this article will explain the concept of market segmentation, and make the link with types and policy questions. Secondly,we will presentan enhanced version of the economic typology based on what has beenpresented in our previous papers. The typology consistsof a set of defined economic areas. This term refers to areas with a specific economic fabric proximity, the predominant presence of an economic use (or a combination of uses) and similar environmental characteristics, such as for example accessibility and visibility. This can be used to define how economy is structured, spread and organised in an area, while subdividing the built up space that accommodates economic activities intoeconomic structures or clusters. We use the types to describe and compare different areas throughout Flanders and Brussels. The work isbased on data about economic activities collected in the field and not coming from existing databases. These databases are mostly conceived for uses that are not related to planning or policy preparations (Gruijthuijsen et al., 2018)and for that reason their use can give a misleading view on the economy. In this paper we present a revised and a tested method that is used to define the economic area types and their classification.At last, we will present our first attempt to translate the types into market segments. This illustrates the possible role the types can have in a policy making process, and it gives an idea on how it could be implemented in the future. We focus on both the potential for spatial transformation and future economic development and intensitification within each of these types