Emmen and the broad region around it must be given much more priority in the government’s new Spatial Planning Memorandum. This is what municipalities and the province of Drenthe want. The Memorandum states what our country will look like in 20 years’ time.
Emmen is given the lowest status: that of a regional center and industrial center that can be ‘strengthened’. According to the government, this strengthening applies to ‘areas with less extensive autonomous economic development and population growth, aimed at developing living and working, appropriate to the size and scale of the region, in line with regional demand.’
But according to provincial representative Yvonne Turenhout (spatial planning) and Emmer’ councilor Guido Rink (economic development), this status does not match the ambitions of the region. And it certainly does not fit in with the 2 billion euros that the government is allocating for the construction of the Lower Saxony line. All kinds of developments are needed around the new railway line.
The province and the region want Emmen to increase in priority and be given the status of ‘initiation region’.
“We were not only very surprised, but also disappointed about the low status of Emmen. Also because we are in discussions with the government about our housing construction ambitions,” says Turenhout. According to Rink, the province and the Emmen region have offered a ‘housing arrangement’, so he is also surprised at the low status where building only seems to be for one’s own needs.
Two housing areas in Emmen itself receive extra attention in the spatial design memorandum, the center and the new Delftlanden district, which is far from being fully built. Some of the 16,200 Drenthe homes agreed with the government should be built there. But for truly large-scale regional or national housing construction, the status of the Emmen region in the Memorandum must really be raised, according to Turenhout and Rink.
Turenhout and Rink certainly do not understand how the low status can be reconciled with the 2 billion that the government is allocating for the construction of the Lower Saxony line. That railway line has always been sold to politicians in The Hague as a means to achieve developments in the region, and not as an end in itself. Turenhout: “The Lower Saxony Line is a game changer for the region. Because there is still room for growth here.”
“That new infrastructure will attract people. Those people want to work somewhere. That is why we are carefully planning in the Emmen region together with the municipalities of Hoogeveen, Coevorden and Borger-Odoorn which industrial estates should be located where.
Besides working, you also have to live. There is room for 50,000 new homes around the Lower Saxony line, which is a number with which we are helping the government with their national housing construction task.” By which Rink wants to say: this is the argument for a high status of Emmen in the memorandum.
According to Turenhout and Rink, a higher status in the Spatial Planning Memorandum not only means more money for government investments, but also that other parties will be willing to invest money in education, new companies and housing construction.
That is why there will be a joint lobby from the broad Emmen region (municipality of Hoogeveen, Coevorden, Emmen, Borger-Odoorn) towards The Hague. The Spatial Planning Policy is still in draft form, so that offers opportunities, according to Turenhout.
The draft Memorandum does describe Southeast Drenthe as a place where there is room for defense, the energy transition, innovative industry and ‘related housing development.’
The Assen – Groningen region is included as an initiating region in the draft of the Spatial Planning Policy Document, or an area that must make a ‘real leap in scale’. According to The Hague, 36,000 new homes and 28,000 new jobs should be created there by the year 2040.
There was no new Spatial Planning Memorandum for a long time. The last one was in 2004. With the exception of a few things, the Netherlands was settled in politics in The Hague. Spatial planning issues could be solved by the provinces or cooperating municipalities, the government believed.
But that was before the housing crisis, before we really realized that we really need to do something about climate change, before the capacity shortages on our energy networks and before we understood that changes in the geopolitical situation also have consequences for our energy supply and defense. For example, at the time the army was mainly concerned with divesting training areas, including in Drenthe. Now it is reversed again.
The expected decline in the rural population did not appear to occur equally everywhere. The aging population, growing demand for care and the changing economy of our country may also require more control from the national government. At the same time, you see that provinces do not want to relinquish all their power over spatial planning. There will therefore be a need for greater cooperation between central government and the region.
The past 20 years have shown that a lot can change. A new Spatial Planning Memorandum can be a good guideline, but long-term visions are often overtaken by reality. The new memorandum must answer the questions: where are we really going to urbanize much more, where should new railway lines and roads be built, where should there be room or more room for agriculture or nature. Where should we do water storage?
The design pays much more attention to the region than in previous Spatial Planning Memorandums. That’s because since 2023 after the report Every Region Counts it has become clear in politics in The Hague that more investment is needed in rural regions and parts of the country that are ‘far’ from the Randstad. Only the Emmen region comes off somewhat poorly in the current design.