SPATIAL MEMORANDUM 2004: A TURNING POINT IN THE NETHERLANDS’ SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY

Abstract

Every ten years or so, the Dutch governmentpublishes a policy memorandum on spatial plan-ning. These documents set out the main frame-work for spatial development for the comingdecades. Once a memorandum has been discussedand approved by parliament – a lengthy procedure– the provinces (regional authorities) are requiredto incorporate the relevant aspects into theirplans, whereupon these basic principles are alsoreflected in the plans at municipal level, directlyaffecting the general public. In 1990, the Fourth Policy Document on SpatialPlanning Extra (VINEX) was published by theMinistry of Housing, Spatial Planning and theEnvironment (VROM). It represented a delibe-rate departure from the then dominant ‘growthpoles’ policy, replacing this with the ‘compact city’policy. The background was primarily to savelandscapes and to reduce car mobility. Centralgovernment and regional authorities enteredinto VINEX contracts covering the period 1995to 2005 and providing for large-scale residentialdevelopments in or around the existing cities. Arevision to the original policy paper, the ‘VINAC’,was then published by the Ministry of VROM(1998), designating a number of additionalresidential developments to be created between2005 and 2010.Apart from the Ministry of VROM itself, variousother ministries have issued policy documentswith a marked spatial component. In 1995,for example, the Ministry of Transport, PublicWorks and Water Management (1995) publisheda memorandum entitled ‘Urbanisation andMobility’, which considered the interrelation-ship between infrastructure policy and spatialpolicy in general. Similarly, the Ministry of Econ-omic Affairs (1999) published a statement on‘Spatial economic policy’, describing the spatialinterventions it considered necessary to ensureadequate space for business activity and toensure proper accessibility. The (then) Ministryof Agriculture, Nature Management andFisheries (1996) also made a contribution in theform of a policy document (‘Policy conclusionson urban landscapes’) setting out new relation-ships between the urban and rural settings.The proliferation of policy statements serves todemonstrate that the various ministries had verydifferent views concerning spatial policy as theNetherlands moved into the twenty first century(Priemus, 1999).In 1999, these ministries published a joint‘Start memorandum’ (VROM