Land Policy in the Netherlands: An Ambiguous Utopia on the Move

Abstract

The Netherlands was traditionally lauded for its planning system, including its land policies. In this chapter, we argue that the picture has always been more nuanced and local planning practice has always been more pragmatic; it was an ambiguous utopia at best. Moreover, the Netherlands has experienced a transition over the last thirty years from active land policy with land ownership of municipalities towards facilitative (or passive) land policy in which developers typically own land and are active in initiating zoning changes. The latter can also be couched as ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ of landowners, where distinctions between the private and public become fuzzy, sometimes in problematic ways. We illustrate this conundrum through the case study of Rijnenburg, a polder close to the city of Utrecht, which has been a ‘planning battle scene’ for over thirty years, with different claims—housing, renewable energy, climate adaptation—and its concomitant representatives competing for prevalence. We conclude that the current system of public–private fuzziness is particularly vulnerable in times of a polycrisis. This predicament calls for a thorough consideration of long-term consequences, for instance in relation to climate adaption and urban development.