A `Planner's Paradise' Lost?

Abstract

National as well as international observers have praised the Dutch national urbanization policy as being exceptionally successful in the recent past. Looking at the urbanization process of recent decades, however, one could wonder if this praise was well deserved. It is acknowledged that national or regional plans are generally only the start of a long-term planning process in which many other actors are involved. Therefore, there is generally no direct connection between these plans and the eventual outcomes. However, if the eventual local outcomes are in conflict with the initial goals of the national or regional plans, the effectiveness of the process between plan acceptance and application in practice becomes very doubtful. The empirical analysis presented in this article suggests that the actual Dutch urbanization process since the 1960s was far from what the national planners wanted it to be. Some successes were surely reached, most of all with the policy of growth centres, but the general tendency of unplanned suburbanization remained unbroken despite all planning efforts. Explanations for this lack of success are probably partly due to administrative or political problems, but much more to the generally limited possibilities for influencing or counteracting the effects of economic, technological and socio-demographic processes through physical planning policy.