national spatial strategy - Springer Link

Journal of Housing and the Built Environment (2005) 20:425–443 DOI 10.1007/s10901-005-9024-3

Ó Springer 2005

Policy and Practice

In search of conceptual modernization: The new Dutch ‘national spatial strategy’ WIL ZONNEVELD OTB Research Institute for Housing Urban and Mobility Studies, Jaffalaam 9, 2628 BX, Delft, The Netherlands (E-mail: [email protected]) Received January 2005; Accepted April 2005

Abstract. In the Netherlands the publication of a new policy document on spatial planning is always a milestone, as the national government is such an important player in this field. The National Spatial Strategy is no exception and, at first sight, marks a complete change of tack. Instead of emphasizing spatial quality – as usual – it concentrates on easing the restrictions on spatial development. Central government wants to take a step backwards in favour of allowing the local authorities, and in particular the provinces, to play a key role. Although the liberal approach to development control is revolutionary, most of the spatial concepts in the National Spatial Strategy are based upon traditional ideas about spatial organization. Key words: National Spatial Strategy, spatial concepts, Spatial Planning Act, The Netherlands, urban networks

1. Introduction In the spring of 2004 the centre-right coalition, which came to power in the Netherlands in 2002, published a brand new policy document on spatial planning. This document – accepted by the House of Representatives of Parliament in May 2005 – marks a radical departure from traditional spatial policy. The government wants to change the division of responsibilities between the three tiers of government in the country. It also wants to put far less emphasis on urban containment compared with previous governments. Central government in the Netherlands issued planning reports as early as 1960 and the National Spatial Strategy is the fifth in a row. These reports fulfil two functions. They present an indicative image of the spatial structure of the country. They also identify the issues for which central government thinks it is responsible. In line with this

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latter function a national planning report contains policy instruments and decisions on the spatial allocation of these instruments. A national report therefore announces strategic as well as operational decisions (for this distinction see Mastop and Faludi, 1997). This paper discusses in principle the strategic frames outlined by the National Spatial Strategy, focusing on the spatial planning concepts. Such concepts bring forward ‘‘ideas about spatial organization’’ (Healey, 1997, p. 78). Spatial concepts express, in a condensed and synthesized form, through words and images how people – in this paper: government – would look at the intended spatial organization of an area (Zonneveld, 1991). Each new national spatial policy report consists (at least partly) of new spatial concepts and therefore comprises a new conceptualization, a new framing (Scho¨n and Rein, 1994) of the national territory. In this respect national planning reports are very influential in relation to the lower levels of government when it comes to the perception of spatial structures and spatial development. They induce what is called frame reflection (ibid. 39 ff.): thinking over underlying structures of belief, perception, and appreciation, in this case in relation to place and territory. For this reason national spatial concepts are not just forming the frame for operational decisions taken by national government itself. They are very influential for the entire policy domain of spatial planning in the country at all levels of government. The high degree of consistency between the spatial policies of various governments throughout the years can be explained by the working of spatial concepts. A tradition of half a century of national government reports on spatial planning is in many ways decisive in this respect. This paper is mainly about the urban spatial concepts of the National Spatial Strategy. The main questions considered here are whether these concepts express a new vision on the changing spatial structure of society and whether the new strategy is doing justice to the complex spatial patterns of housing, working and leisure, patterns currently becoming highly fragmented over space. The paper begins with a short introduction to the Dutch planning system and the changes foreseen by a revision of the Spatial Planning Act. We then briefly look at a national spatial policy report that was published ahead of the National Spatial Strategy but dropped by the present government. We then turn to the philosophy of governance of the current National Spatial Strategy. This is followed by the main body of the paper, discussing the urban concepts of the Strategy. We round off the discussion with some conclusions.

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2. The Dutch planning system: the importance of discourse The legal and institutional basis of the Dutch system is laid down in the Spatial Planning Act (Wet ruimtelijke ordening) of 1962 (which became effective in 1965). Since that time the idea has always been that planning should be conceived of, above all, as a co-ordination activity. The instruments for this activity were deliberately and predominantly of a non-financial nature. Financing came mainly from policy sectors such as transport, housing or agriculture. The instruments of the planner were primarily communicative: concepts, plans and vision documents were to be used to capture the imagination of the various relevant actors, both within the sector departments at the national level (the ‘horizontal axis’ of coordination) as well as at the other levels of government (the ‘vertical axis’). The original planning act has been amended several times and is now more or less unworkable (see also Wolsink, 2003). The act gives each tier of government the authority to lay down a strategic plan. This results in a complex system of interrelated plans – from the national level to the regional, from the regional to the local level. These are (a) the national spatial planning key decisions, such as the National Spatial Strategy, which undergo public consultation and need to be approved by parliament (b) the provincial regional plans (although this is not a requirement, statutory plans are in operation in every province) and (c) the municipal structure plans. These plans are indicative. Although the municipal structure plan does have some judicial consequences, this is strictly limited to the municipality itself. The only legally binding plan in the Dutch system is the municipal land-use plan (bestemmingsplan), but this is purely passive: citizens are not obliged to implement this plan. Its main function is to create a maximum degree of legal security, although over the years some elements of flexibility have been introduced. The Dutch planning system is thus characterized by the absence of an obligation to bring spatial plans in line with the strategic plans (or key decisions) of a ‘higher’ government. To a large extent the trick of planning lies in extensive intra-governmental negotiation and consultation. The density of discourse is probably the most fundamental characteristic of spatial planning in the Netherlands (Hajer and Zonneveld, 2000). Provincial plans serve as the lynchpin between national planning key decisions and local zoning plans. The prime function of the provincial structural plans is to steer local zoning plans in line with

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provincial policy. So, the provincial authority exerts a dual influence at a local level: on the issue of strategic plans and on the issue of formal rights to grant or withhold approval for local zoning plans. Both these areas of influence will disappear as the government intends to fundamentally overhaul the Spatial Planning Act (the government aims for the act to become effective in 2007). The provincial structural plans, like national planning key decisions, are to be replaced by structural visions which will be politically binding only upon the authority itself. Provincial and central government will be able to issue regulations which bind authorities at lower levels. These changes could indeed lead to a more effective planning system in the sense of higher flexibility to societal demands and a lesser need for elaborate, time-consuming intra-governmental deliberations. As the new spatial visions will only have political repercussions at the level where they are produced, the burden on the coordination role of plan-making could also be lowered. At the same time there could be more scope for a societal process of plan-making in which governments seek to involve stakeholders right from the outset of vision-making processes. Besides all these potential improvements of the Dutch planning system, the Dutch Council of State, which advises the government and parliament on legislation and governance and is also the highest court in the country, has issued a stark warning about the proposed amendments to the Spatial Planning Act (RvS, 2003, p. 3). It emphasizes that the provincial structure plan has become an important point of reference for local plan-making. As the new provincial visions will only have repercussions for the provincial authority itself, this function is likely to vanish. The Council anticipates ‘‘serious consequences’’ for the position of the provinces in spatial planning and a ‘‘strong decline in the importance of the provincial spatial planning policy’’ (ibid; translation author). The Council concludes that the government ‘‘...apparently attaches less importance to planological coordination at regional level than it did in the past. With spatial planning now forming one of the main tasks of the provincial authorities, the question that now needs to be addressed is how their position will be affected when the bill becomes law. This question is all the more relevant, given that the bill aims to bolster spatial coherence in the decision-making and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of spatial policy.’’ Strangely this is not a big issue in the professional domain. Only a few papers have been published in Dutch professional journals. The provinces themselves are much less anxious to take up


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their new role. They seem more eager to accept possibilities for a more pro-active, less regulatory role. The changes which the Spatial Planning Act will undergo are reflected in the National Spatial Strategy. Before we thus turn our attention to the ‘philosophy of governance’ of this Strategy, we briefly look at some of the events that took place before this Strategy was published.

3. Preceding the national spatial strategy In the 1990s spatial planning in the Netherlands was dominated by the concept of the compact city. This concept lies at the heart of the Fourth National Policy Document on Spatial Planning which was issued by the Ministry of Spatial Planning (MVROM) in 1990 (Vierde nota over de ruimtelijke ordening Extra or VINEX) and was last updated in 1999. This VINEX stated that new urbanization processes would have to take place in a highly concentrated form, preferably on brownfield sites within city perimeters and then, if necessary, on adjacent greenfield sites just outside the city perimeters. The concept of the compact city is not just about urban configurations. Considered nowadays as best practice in many countries (see for instance CEC, 1999), the compact city also presents a vision of the way cities function. In fact, the Minister of Spatial Planning who was responsible for the 1999 VINEX update actually changed the name to the ‘complete’ city, because it would denote more accurately a full spectrum of urban amenities within the precincts of urban agglomerations (MVROM, 1997). The complete city was seen as a self-sufficient system that could meet all the daily needs of the urban dweller. This perception of the way cities and urban regions internally function has been heavily criticized. In reality socio-spatial patterns have emerged in which work, recreation and dwelling are spread across space and with little stability over time. The general commitment of the planning system to concentrate these activities in and around the existing confined urban regions has not been able to prevent this general dispersal of households and activities (Hajer and Zonneveld, 2000, p. 349). After long and protracted deliberations, a new, Fifth National Policy Document appeared in 2001. The product of a ‘purple’ threeparty coalition consisting of social-democrats and left- and right-ofcentre liberals, the Fifth National Policy Document marked a remarkable shift in government policy, for it was teeming with the concept

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of the complete city. According to the new creed, network cities would emerge at a regional level in a constellation of ‘‘urban centres and nodes’’ (MVROM, 2001, p. 179 ff). These urban networks would form integrated and self-contained housing and labour markets with excellent internal connections thanks to a well-designed system of regional public transport. The Fifth Policy Document also pinpointed the areas where such developments would take place – or it may be more accurate to say ‘might’ take place, because a policy-driven interpretation of spatial structure was clearly at stake here. The new element, which marked the Fifth Policy Document as a watershed in nearly three decades of national urban policy, was that, from now on, the entire territory of the network city would form the search area for new urban developments. The watchword was no longer ‘concentric’ urbanization (the ‘centre’ located in individual cities). Moreover, the urban network as a whole – rather than individual cities – would be self-sufficient in terms of urban functions. So much for the novelties. The Dutch government took the view that urban networks should only develop in explicitly designated areas. So, decisions had to be taken on which cities would be included and which not. The urban network, though an innovative concept, in this respect was still an echo of the past, since, like the former urban region, it was defined in terms of the urban centres that belonged to it. In an – almost desperate – attempt to prevent urbanization from encroaching on the countryside, the Fifth Policy Document stated that so-called ‘red contours’ had to be drawn around cities to demarcate the outer edges of urban expansion. This meant that all twelve provincial authorities in the Netherlands would have to add contours to their spatial plans (of which six had already done so). The contour principle has been one of the most fiercely debated issues in spatial planning in recent years. It has some avid supporters, especially among environmentalists and nature and landscape conservationists. The opponents are a much larger mixed bag of, amongst others, property developers and employers’ organizations, but also many professional spatial planners who are weary of rigid generic policy principles which are applied in every corner of the country regardless of the actual situation. The future spatial policy according to the Fifth Policy Report seemed to be doing the splits: yes, we have to accept that cities have become polynuclear urban regions; no, expansion is not allowed and urban configurations must be contained by stringent regulations.


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Central government would continue to play a strong role in steering urban development in the Netherlands.

4. A new ‘philosophy of governance’ April 2002 saw the collapse of the second ‘purple’ coalition. By then, the Fifth Policy Document was about three-quarters of its way through the procedure which national spatial planning key decisions have to follow. It only awaited a parliamentary reading and a formal decision on wording and maps. In the Netherlands a fallen government usually rounds off any current business, but it leaves the controversial issues to its successor. The new national spatial policy was a controversial issue. The Dutch Parliament deferred the reading of the Fifth Policy Document and, in effect, sounded its death knell. The new, centre-right government, which took over in 2002, decided to unite two planning key decision procedures, the other one being for the Second National Structure Plan for Green Areas (Tweede Structuurschema Groene Ruimte). So, there was only one policy document. In a country like the Netherlands where urban and rural issues are so closely intertwined, there is in fact no justification for artificially separating two domains that so obviously belong together. The amalgamation of the two documents also sent out an early signal that the new government would be less strict in separating town and country. This was in contrast to its predecessor, which had developed the contour system as the centrepiece of its spatial policy. The new government also appeared to be pursuing a new ‘philosophy of governance’; it had a different vision of its role in relation to the provinces and municipalities and envisaged ‘‘fewer rules and regulations dictated by central government, more scope for local and regional considerations, more development planning and less development control’’(MHSPE, 2004, p. 3). It was particularly protective of the so-called ‘National Spatial Structure’, a system of networks and regions which it regarded as nationally important and which would form the main focus of government investment (ibid: 6). One of the most essential elements in the new strategy is the concentration policy, which the government is passing on to the local authorities. The municipalities will do the work, but it is the provinces, above all, which will orchestrate things. All that central government will do is provide support and perform ‘marginal’ checks – or

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so the document says. It is this part of the strategy – making the provinces and municipalities responsible for what can be very awkward issues – which has met with strong criticism from many ‘policywatchers’. Basically, what most of the criticism boils down to is that the municipalities are all too eager to build and the provinces are politically far too weak to resist the pressure from below. The distrust which many people feel towards the new philosophy of governance behind the National Spatial Strategy is exacerbated by statements in the document itself. The subtitle ‘Creating space for development’ is highly ambiguous in this respect. On the one hand it is a good thing the Strategy drops contour-like restrictions on spatial development which are based upon outdated conceptions of spatial organization. On the other hand the Strategy suggests a ‘free for all’ approach. For instance, the very first boldly printed text in the Strategy – i.e. a policy statement which cannot be changed without parliamentary approval – on the principal goal of national spatial planning policy opens with the one-liner: ‘‘The main goal of national spatial policy is to create space for the different functions that demand it [...]’’ (MVROM, 2004a, p. 22; translation: MHSPE, 2004, p. 3). It is interesting to notice that discussions in the House of Representatives of Parliament have led to an important change in the wording. Although there is still mention of the need to efficiently create space for the functions that demand it, in the same breath it is emphasized that this should be done according to the principle of sustainability and that the spatial quality of cities and the countryside should be improved (MVROM, 2005, p. 8). This overall goal is split into subsidiary goals. It is always worth noting the order in texts like these because it invariably reflects the order of importance. Strengthening the international competitive position of the Netherlands is mentioned first. Moreover, of the total text dedicated to the goals of national policy, less then one-tenth is dedicated to what is called ‘‘securing and developing important national and international spatial values’’, which is seen by many to be what spatial planning now is all about. By then it is crystal clear to the reader where the priorities lie. But the document is anything but clear about the ‘values’ behind the actual policy decisions. It embraces a principle called ‘basic quality’. This is apparently some sort of minimum that the national government wants to stick to, but what it actually amounts to is anybody’s guess – not least because it is split into content and processes. In the long run it is up to the lower tiers of government to


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interpret basic quality. In interpreting the basic values underlying the National Spatial Strategy, however, municipal and provincial authorities, who receive the burden of new responsibilities, are left in the dark. The Second Chamber of the Parliament expressed some unease about this state of affairs – even the right-wing liberals, who should be rubbing their hands in glee at the sight of a government strategy with such a strong focus on boosting the economy. In the face of opposition, the minister was forced to promise that developments will be monitored and a method will be devised for assessing basic quality. On the level of spatial concepts or principles of spatial organization, which normally are more concrete compared with the level of policy goals, the Strategy is often again anything but clear. We now turn our attention to some of the most important of such concepts.

5. The new urban concepts 5.1. The urban network Concepts are underpinned by more fundamental values: principles of spatial order (WRR, 1998, NSCGP, p. 23 ff, 1999, 13 ff; see also Hajer and Zonneveld, 2000). One of the key principles in Dutch spatial policy is cohesion, i.e. the concentration of spatial functions and elements that are seen as belonging together. In elaborating spatial cohesion, traditionally the emphasis has been put on proximity. This eventually resulted in the concept of the compact city. The principle of spatial cohesion has come under heavy pressure: social arrangements increasingly stretch across space. Proximity as an organizing principle is substituted for connectivity, although to a different extent for distinct activities. The concept of the urban network seems to pay tribute to such development but only half-heartedly. The imagery speaks for itself: the draft Fifth Policy Document (see Figure 1) presents the urban network as a constellation of spheres – the city is a ‘molecule’, so to speak. The lines represent actual infrastructural connections, but at the same time are symbolic of cohesion and complementarity. In provincial planning documents this is the dominant way of visualizing urban networks. The National Spatial Strategy partly adopts the approach of the preceding Fifth Policy Document and partly rejects it. It neatly adopts the definition of urban networks from the Fifth Policy Document (MVROM, 2004b, p. 63). However, the Strategy refuses to

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Figure 1. A new vision of urban structures: integration through networks Source: MVROM 2001.

outline the composition of each of the six urban networks it identifies (i.e. the cities belonging to a network), nor does it use contours. This would clearly contradict the governance philosophy embraced by the Strategy. The maps bear this out. The urban network is no longer portrayed as a molecule. All that we see is a rough indication of the location and the boundaries (see Figure 2).


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Figure 2. Adjusting the new vision of urban structures: urban networks as urban fields (the blobs) and the economy spatially organized through clearly identifiable zones (the outlined areas). Source: MVROM 2004a.

At first glance, the imagery comes across as inept. However, the representation of the urban network is far more in tune with current reality compared with the images of the Fifth Policy Document that suggest clear-cut relations between cities and a hierarchy between the larger cities and their surroundings. In contrast the Spatial Strategy depicts the ‘new-style city’ as a great open swathe, as some sort of large urban field without a clear internal structure. It is not unusual for spa-

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tial planning to leave large open spaces on maps when decision-makers cannot or will not make a choice, in this case about the cities forming a network. That may well be the case here. However, we could also say that the Strategy is refreshingly honest in this respect: there is no longer an easily recognizable spatial structure within urban networks. Accepting this was clearly one bridge too far for the makers of the Fifth Policy Document a few years earlier. Nevertheless traditional elements are still present in the Spatial Strategy. First there is again the suggestion that urban networks have outer perimeters. Second the urban network is pinned down to one specific spatial scale which seems difficult to combine with the complex multi-scalar arrangements in present society. As such the urban network concept seems to be based more on the relationships within and between governments: politicians and administrators use proximity as the basis for their cooperation while households and activities are dispersed over space and engage in multiple arrangements across different levels of space. So the concept of urban networks in the new National Spatial Strategy is only partially a principle of spatial organization. It is also – and probably mainly – a principle of governmental cooperation. Discussions in the House of Representatives have led to an emphasis on the latter. The urban network is not only to be seen as a spatial concept, a principle of spatial organization, but also as a principle of the organization of government (MVROM, 2005, p. 54).

5.2. The economic core area and the concentration area The urban network concept in the Fifth Policy Document not only embraces a fairly optimistic notion of spatial cohesion, it also presupposes a large measure of governmental co-operation, especially in the case of the largest urban network, the Randstad. Here numerous cities and no fewer than four provinces were expected to work together; with supra-regional affairs coordinated at a national level (MVROM, 2001, p. 26; see van Duinen, 2004). The present government is not all that keen on large-scale co-operation. It wants to retain the formal three-tier administrative structure without complicated structures in between which blur the distinction between the three administrative layers. Consequently the supraprovincial spatial concept Randstad Holland is being re-drawn along provincial boundaries, which confirms our conclusion above that a spatial concept could well be a principle of administrative cooperation


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in disguise. The urban network of Randstad Holland is seen as consisting of three economic core areas: the Northern Flank, the Southern Flank and the Utrecht Region. But what are the implications for the medium term? The ‘Regio Randstad’ partnership, which is formed by the four Randstad provinces, the cooperation areas around the four main cities and municipalities, will probably just pale into insignificance. This would be a pity: multi-scalar urban relations require multi-level forms of governance. Currently (mid 2005) a strategic study is under way on the future role of ‘Regio Randstad’. The above indicates that spatial concepts do not need to be rooted in any sort of vision of the existing or desired spatial structure, but can just as easily be grafted onto the geographical administrative boundaries. What will then become of the Randstad concept? Will it be nothing more than a name? It is, in any case, clear that the present government is completely indifferent to the arguments for a Randstad rail system, a hot issue when the Fifth Policy Document was prepared. The same goes for Brabantstad, another large-scale urban network in the Fifth Policy Document, which has been sliced up in the National Spatial Strategy. The government does not want to spend one euro on developing Brabantrail, which would connect all the cities in the province of Brabant. The National Spatial Strategy in fact does not shed any light on the purpose behind concepts like Randstad and Brabantstad; it even increases the confusion. Although it accords more or less equal importance to the concepts of urban network and economic core area, the relationship between the two is obscure. But this obscurity could prove lucrative. If the municipalities manage to work together in networks, they will receive financial rewards because the status of economic core area qualifies them for government subsidies for the realization of large, complex business estates, a.k.a. ‘top projects’ (MVROM, 2004b, pp. 33, 45). This points to another function which spatial concepts often have in Dutch planning: as principles for the allocation of central government funding. This nearly always leads to a watering down of the content of spatial concepts. For instance, while the National Spatial Strategy was waiting to be discussed in the House of Representatives, intensive lobbying took place to award the medium-sized cities of Zwolle and Leeuwarden, not pictured on any of the policy maps of the strategy, some sort of policy label. The lobby appeared partly successful. The two cities will get the same financial treatment as some of the recognized urban networks (MVROM, 2005, p. 62) but they will not be pictured on any map. So

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officially they are not part of the main spatial structure of the country, a sensitive issue because not ‘‘being on the map’’ (Jensen and Richardson, 2004, p. 100 ff.) is often considered as a denial of existence. This question of being on the map supersedes the prime function of spatial concepts, namely stimulating spatial consciousness. Besides urban networks and economic core areas, concentration areas have been introduced to replace the far more restrictive ‘red contours’. The maps of the National Spatial Strategy show the concentration areas as large empty swathes, which are supposed to serve as search areas for new building projects. Again it is the local authorities who will have to flesh out the policy. The only specific task that has been assigned to them is to ensure that the quantitative relationship between concentration areas and all other areas remains at least equal (MVROM, 2005, p. 67). This is a clear departure from the VINEX approach. Whereas, at present, the provinces have to prove that they are preventing the municipalities from engaging in too much building, in future the central government will decide ‘‘...whether each province is reserving enough space to meet the needs of urban-related functions’’. This quote (MVROM, 2005, p. 86; translation author) is taken from a boldly printed text – which indicates that it is one of the core principles of the Strategy. Another part of the document (ibid: 85) states that the government will check whether the demand for space is being adequately met. In itself this approach seems right. Why should central government interfere with local developments? The concept of the compact city, with its strict rules on the location of new building sites, had to be employed in every corner of the country, like the even more rigid concept of contours. The ultimate step would have been a logical one given the governance philosophy of the new National Spatial Strategy: no demarcation of areas by central government altogether. In the domain of politics there is no agreement on this as we have emphasized above discussing the instrument of contours. To avoid controversy the present government avoided a choice which in itself would perfectly fit within the propagated governance philosophy.

5.3. More spatial-economic policy concepts Readers and users of the National Spatial Strategy are thus confronted with a heap of urban concepts which touch and overlap (also on the map), and offer a very unclear picture of their various functions and


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purposes. One of the ‘newspeak’ metaphors that appear in the document is the ‘port’. Since the Fourth National Policy Document, Dutch spatial-infrastructural and spatial-economic policy has been dominated by the ‘mainport’ doctrine (see van Duinen, 2004), which essentially says that Schiphol airport and the Port of Rotterdam are crucially important as they are the hubs that support the bulk of the national economy. Both areas need scope to expand and must be connected to state-of-the-art infrastructure. It seems therefore that the word ‘port’ has far-reaching associations. The protectors of agribusiness in the Netherlands, led by the Minister of Agriculture, jumped on the ‘port’ bandwagon and coined the term ‘greenport’. The theory is that if the Rotterdam mainport is crucial to the Dutch economy, then so are the large agribusiness complexes. The National Spatial Strategy names five greenports, four of which are in the Randstad. Again the main implication of the concept – besides the provision of space for development – is government funding: the cash which is earmarked for improving the international competitiveness of Dutch agriculture is ‘primarily intended’ for these areas. The greenport does not pay attention to the complicated relations within the Dutch agricultural complex which cannot be tied down to five specific areas. Also the main centres of knowledge, like the Wageningen University and Research Centre, are not integrated into the concept. So a strictly zonal approach is followed here while a network approach would have made more sense. The Strategy is further embellished by the concept of the ‘brainport’. During the sometimes heated debates on the mainport concept in the 1990s, especially when it crystallized out in the form of a fifth Schiphol runway (labelled by the minister as the ‘environmental runway’ due to the expected reduction of noise in the locality), the Maasvlakte (a new extension to the Rotterdam harbour stretching into the North Sea) and the Betuwe line (a new, dedicated freight railway line, now on the brink of its opening), many opponents pointed out that the national policy should not concentrate so strongly on environmentally unfriendly sectors, which did no more than transport people and goods. The national economy should be further developed as a (far less environmentally unfriendly) knowledge economy. In other words, promote the Netherlands as a brainport. The mainport concept itself originated from the idea that a limited number of seaports in the world were expected to become the prime nodes in international and distribution networks. Therefore, instead of just concentrating on the qualities of individual ports the emphasis should

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be put on coherence between the individual parts of international transport chains: not the beads but the complete chain (van Duinen, 2004, p. 65). In the Netherlands the opposite has happened, so again we see a localized, zonal concept dominating instead of a network approach. The same happened with the concept of the brainport. In the National Spatial Strategy this objective is whittled down to a localized spatial concept referring to the region of Eindhoven/Southeast Brabant where Philips research facilities are located as well as one of the three Dutch technical universities (MVROM, 2004a, p. 26; MVROM, 2005,pp 79–80). Research has shown, however, that the knowledge economy is not strongly localized, as the strategy suggests (Raspe et alia, 2004; van Oort and Raspe, 2005; see also VROMRaad, 2004) and certainly not limited to one particular economic sector (industry) as the National Spatial Strategy assumes. So, it appears that the brainport – at least as the government understands it – does not exist at all. What is more, scarcely any concrete implications have yet been attached to the concept. The National Spatial Strategy (MVROM, 2005, p. 41) speaks only of ‘stimulation’. The potential ‘damage’ resulting from the application of such a biased concept is therefore rather limited. All in all, the spatial-economic principles of the National Spatial Strategy have met with a very mixed response. Interestingly, nowhere else in the document is the language as rhetorical as in the sections on spatial-economic policy. This is a clear indication that a dominant role was played by the Ministry of Economic Affairs when the document was being prepared which is in sharp contrast with the making of the Fourth and Fifth Policy Report. Shortly after the publication of the Strategy, Economic Affairs issued its own policy document (MEA, 2004) presenting an image of the Netherlands in which the regional labelling verges on the ridiculous (for instance: ‘‘Southeastern Netherlands: towards a top technology region’’). It magnifies distinctions in the economic structure of areas which are barely recognizable in reality. Most striking of all though is the decision in both documents to focus the policy so strongly on traditional sectors, even though it is actually no novelty: the preceding Fourth Report (Extra) did the same. Moreover, as these sectors are being seen as situated in specific geographical areas, the network character of the current economy does not to seem to have been taken into consideration seriously. Essentially, the decision is bound up with the intention to use spatial concepts as a basis for allocating government funding. The fact that


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these sectors also place a huge burden on the environment and are more or less exclusively located in the Randstad might also account to some extent for the rhetoric and, to some extent, the highly tendentious language.

6. Conclusion If the new National Spatial Strategy is all that it seems, then it will mark a turning point in spatial policy in the Netherlands. An unprecedented array of policy issues will be deliberately placed in the hands of the local authorities, including the urban concentration policy, which has been a core business of central government since the 1980s. However, is the Strategy all that it seems? Some critics have maintained that what was leaving through the front door of the Ministry of Spatial Planning (MVROM) was creeping back in through the back door via monitoring and regional inspectorates. Up to now, the Strategy has seen monitoring mainly as a means of determining whether provinces (and municipalities) are adopting a healthy approach to development planning – will enough houses and business parks be built in the near future? The main criticism levelled against the National Spatial Strategy is that it places a disproportionate emphasis on development – especially economic development. At this point government policy does indeed go into overdrive. In addition, the spatial-economic concepts in the Strategy are the weakest in the entire document when it comes to the analytical assumptions underlying them. The Brabant Brainport, the greenports and the (13) economic core areas are no more than poorly underpinned principles for the allocation of government funding. In terms of its conceptual orientation, the National Spatial Strategy contains a considerable number of new spatial concepts, in particular when compared with the Fourth Report (Extra). Just about every spatial concept, however, turns out to be rather one-dimensional and, taken together, portray the spatial organization of society as being made up of clearly recognizable spatial units. When the Spatial Planning Bill takes effect the spatial planning key decision will go and will be replaced by a political vision. Hopefully spatial concepts will then no longer be used primarily as principles for the allocation of central government funding and the deployment of policy instruments. We might then see the introduction of a new class of spatial

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concepts more in line with the actual spatial organization of present society in which proximity is far less important than suggested by some of the ‘new’ spatial concepts of today. Visioning should be in the first place aimed at creating new strategic spatial concepts. Such concepts set the frames for policy-making and concrete decisionmaking, but are in themselves not the same as taking concrete territorial decisions. Territorial structure is not to be equated with the spaces and places where certain concrete actions take place. Maps are crucial to spatial visioning, but there is need for a more fuzzy visual language instead of the clearly outlined spaces appearing on the maps of the National Spatial Strategy.

Acknowledgements This article is based upon a research project financed by the Netherland Institute of Spatial Research (RPB) and Delft University of Technology through the Delft Center for Sustainable Areas.

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