Spatial-Economic Investment Policy and Urban Regeneration in the Netherlands

Abstract

The Netherlands has a certain reputation in the areas of spatial policy, infrastructure policy, and urban policy. In the 1980s the national governments of many countries became less directly involved, with the consequence that spatial policy and urban policy were left more to the marketplace. In that period, this trend could also be observed in the Netherlands. Since the mid-1990s, however, in the Netherlands there has been a new public commitment to infrastructure policy and urban policy, and also to spatial policy. In this paper I account for this marked change of course by the extra profits which the Netherlands has received, particularly since the 1990s, from excise duty on natural gas and government income from the privatization of government services. Privatization and the export of natural gas have enabled the Dutch government to put more public investment into the development of traffic infrastructure and the regeneration of cities.