Vreemde bedgenoten: publiek-private samenwerking in de Nederlandse ruimtelijke ordening 1950-1980

Abstract

This contribution investigates the public-private partnerships between local officials and property developers in the Dutch field of urban planning during the post-war period, with a focus on the redevelopment agendas for the central areas of larger cities such as Utrecht and Amsterdam. I argue that we should see the ties between the public and private sector in this field as the outcome of a structural dependency of the state on private investments. Indeed, even at the zenith of the social-democratic welfare state, local governments very much leaned on the market to get urban redevelopment off the ground. Thus, we should be careful to draw a clean line between the golden age of state involvement in urban planning from the end of the Second World War to the economic crises of the 1970s and the neoliberal policies of the 1980s. While the case studies in this article display some features of urban neoliberalism, such as a belief in market efficiency and the advancement of interurban competition, these were never the means nor the ends of urban policies. By working with a wide array of primary sources and employing the theories of urban scholars such David Harvey and Hank Savitch and Paul Kantor, I argue for a more comprehensive and multifaceted narrative of the involvement of property developers in local affairs and the partnerships and growth coalitions they built with government bodies.