Making European cities more competitive
The concentric concept of urban planning has become outdated as the services sector has relocated outside the city center. To maintain growth, city planners and officials must first understand the needs of new enterprises looking to set up shop and then set about satisfying these needs. The COMET project was funded under the Key Action entitled 'City of Tomorrow' of the Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development Programme to investigate these issues and provide guidance based upon their findings. Data from case studies of seven different cities across Europe was subjected to Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The Universite Libre de Bruxelles, a COMET partner, used PCA to reduce the multidimensional data to just a few principal components that explain most of the variability in the dataset. Following feedback from the other partners in the COMET consortium, a report was composed describing the requirements of today's enterprises. It also explained what is currently available to them and how this gap can be bridged through intelligent planning. In order to make the results of the analysis more user-friendly, elaborate maps were constructed to make the information visually appealing and easy to understand. The maps were also used to illustrate important physical processes at work in today's cities. The COMET report and maps constitute an important set of tools for driving future city planning and policy with an eye towards stimulating economic growth in Europe's cities.
