Spatial planning has been chafing for some time, no wonder after fifty years without national plans. We think that the country is cluttered and the Randstad is full. And so the first reflex to point at the government is: intervene! Earlier, in 20211, I wrote to Prime Minister Rutte to appeal to his liberal character. Without stability (read: plan) we are rudderless and therefore unfree, I tried.
I also submitted an opinion on the Memorandum on Infrastructure and Spatial Planning that was heading for decentralization and deregulation, in vain. The naïve arrogance to leave things as they are, an unthinking luxury that could only be afforded because the Randstad happens to be a dispersed metropolis, in which the space claims still tolerate each other.
Now, ten years later, experts are waking up and shouting in unison that something must be done. Partly because a million more houses have to be built due to a housing shortage.
But since the Second World War, we have been doing nothing else. The reassuring landscape, that billiard cloth of ours, which was so magnificently maintained by farmers and water boards, will soon be gone. The pastoral buffer that managed to maintain the illusion of autonomous cities and independent local decisions. Who gave us the benefit of not having to choose, because space could always fold back a bit without us having to fall from our faith. That emptiness that turned our country into a world wonder of planning, while in fact we mainly designed state-of-the-art districts and neighborhoods and strung them together into a patchwork. We were able to build on our communities, the comfortable comfort of like-minded people and contented craftsmanship, knowing that our backyard was in good hands.
But how different it is now. Those million homes are peanuts compared to the territorial drift of energy, climate and logistics. The call for central control is getting louder, we have to appoint a Minister of Spatial Planning again. But don’t fall for it people! Lie down for this; it is a toothless tiger.
As long as governing is no more than looking after the shop, as long as it is about efficiency and effectiveness and as long as the well-being of people, let alone our planet, is not central, the grand commodity is the commodity and we have no idea where our society is heading, a possible Minister of Housing or Spatial Planning has no idea what to do. And even if he/she already knows that and develops a vista on his/her own, then even mundanity and practical objections will push him/her back into the corset of medium-term planning and mediocrity. Without values, policy is defenseless.
Our country is facing major issues. These are not determined locally and, strangely enough, not by Brussels either. Health, education, (youth) care, legal certainty and also spatial planning; these are all themes on which we have slipped. These are precisely the themes that we as a country are concerned about. All that is needed is that the Dutch demand an inspired government and not allow themselves to be fobbed off with mediocrity. A population that expects vision and stability from the government. Not to be more bound and to record everything, but to make progress and make us feel free again.
Henk Hartzema, Blauwe Kamer, Februari 2021
