Les villes : l'habitat comme clef centrale de l'aménagement urbain

Abstract

from other nations, is its exceptional social housing stock, both in terms of quantity -relatively largest in Europe -and in terms of quality and accessibility. The extensive production of subsidized housing over the period 1950-1990 provided accomodation for low and medium income households. In addition, that very production facilitated a strong physical planning policy. Government was able to apply the Randstad-Green Heart planning concept and to develop new towns according to plan (as far as housing was concerned), simply because there was so much social housing to be built that could be directed to locations where government wanted it to go. However, the restructuring of the Dutch welfare state, that reached momentum during the ninety nineties, implied a reduction of state interference in general, and in housing too. Consequently, government lost its grip on the (re)structuring of urbanized areas in terms of the geography of urban development. That situation is not accepted by all people. Therefore, attempts are made to restore the policy in which the role of government is important. Current debates on housing focus upon efforts to avoid spatial concentra¬ tions of low income households. This paper discusses Dutch housing and policy developments over the past decades and illustrates that todays housing policy instruments -but also other instruments -are likely to be insufficient to have significant steering effects on present urban development processes. An increase of segregation of the popula¬ tion will be the result.