Potential business-shed model for spatial economic land use planning: towards regional economic resilience

ABSTRACT

Economic resilience is the ability of a region’s economy to withstand urgent economic shocks. To plan for regional economic resilience, the key lies in the spatial economic power of areas of interest (AOIs) and in the city-region concept as the basis for the sustainable regional planning. This study aims to develop guidelines for ‘resilienizing’ the regional economy by proposing a Potential Business-Shed (PBS) Model based on the Huff-Gravity Model, a tool for economic planning, incorporated with sustainable growth strategies, socio-economic factors and GIS. The study is applied on the Northern Region of Jordan, where the guidelines are enriched by the consultation of the public residents. The results of a survey (2332 at random) reveal an economic resilience plan with the locations of three AOIs: Regional Commercial Business (RCB), greenheart, and refugee settlements. The proposed RCB received 41% of the market share in the area and covered an area of (307,740 m²). 84% of the residents want an accessible RCB and 97% think the region needs it. The study provides a model that ‘resilienizes’ similar regions with sudden shocks in their economic structure.

KEYWORDS:

• Potential Business-Shed (PBS)
• Regional economic resilience
• Huff-Gravity model
• GIS
• Jordan

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the Deanship of Scientific Research/Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan for funding the data collection in this study. The authors are also thankful to Arch. Samaa Marji for her insightful comments on how to present the survey results.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Jordan University of Science and Technology [grant number 20190014].