The Netherlands seemed ‘finished’ ten years ago. The Delta Works were completed, highways and railways were built and there were enough houses. Spatial planning by the government was no longer a great necessity.
That was the picture, wrote Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Housing and Spatial Planning, CDA) in a letter to Parliament this spring. An ‘outdated’ image, because the problems have just piled up. There is now a shortage of 300,000 homes, nitrogen is restricting nature and the economy, climate change and the energy transition are forcing action, and the landscape is ‘boxing’.
In retrospect, it seems an illogical decision by the Rutte I cabinet: the dissolution and split in 2010 of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM). From then on, the central government left the policy to the provinces and municipalities. Who were given a major role in developing and managing nature? Farmers and citizens.
The image that the Netherlands was ‘finished’ is only part of the explanation for letting go of control – and is being contested. “That was not the case at all,” says Jacqueline Cramer, the penultimate Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (PvdA) from 2007 to 2010. “I had plenty of programs running. About the Randstad, or the Delta Program for water management.”
The gradual decentralization of spatial policy started earlier, by both the right and the left, if you read back the coalition agreements. Another success were the centrally planned new housing estates from the Fourth Memorandum Spatial Planning Extra (VINEX) from 1993, such as Leidsche Rijn. The Kok II cabinet (1998-2002) also wanted a Fifth Memorandum, albeit with ‘new forms of consultation’ with ‘relevant groups in society’.
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fragile coalition
After the political advance of Pim Fortuyn, the view on spatial policy changed. The fragile coalition of the Balkenende I cabinet (CDA, VVD and LPF) wanted to give municipalities and provinces a ‘full place in spatial policy’. The ‘note culture’ with a slow bureaucracy had to be ‘broken’.
So there was no Fifth Memorandum, but a Spatial Memorandum (2004) of the Balkenende II cabinet (CDA, VVD and D66). That piece was still more than 200 pages, under the motto ‘decentralized where possible, centralized where necessary’.
The abolition of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment in 2010 eventually followed another political upheaval: the minority cabinet Rutte I of VVD, CDA with support of the PVV. Spatial planning shrunk to seven rules in the coalition agreement.
‘Themes in which VROM was strong suddenly fell out of favor,’ says Cramer.
“Climate, environment, nature and culture.” “They threw everything over the fence and thought: well, we’re done,” says the well-known urban planner Riek Bakker.
“Incomprehensible and painful”, the then Chief Government Architect Liesbeth van der Pol still thinks. “Our studio consisted of forty people. We’ve lobbied like beasts at ministers. A lot of knowledge has been lost with VROM in order to build quickly, qualitatively and experimentally.”
At the same time, public administration has been irritated about VROM for some time. Within politics, certainly by government parties CDA and VVD, the department was seen as “an obstacle with complex and long procedures and unnecessary rules”, according to the chronicle. Spatial Planning (2020).
In addition, a deep economic crisis began in 2007. During Balkenende IV it had already been decided that the national government had to make cutbacks. A few ministries found it difficult to slim down in time, including VROM. “Medium size, but a bit on the thick side”, was VROM in 2011 in Domestic Governance named.
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The magazine wrote at the time that the merger of VROM with the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management to form the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment was obvious. But transferring Housing to the Interior would have been a “pure political decision” to make the post of Minister Piet Hein Donner (CDA) more difficult. Donner contradicts this. “A ministry had to be split up,” he says. “It was beyond me.”
Public housing had also lost importance. The housing market and construction were flat due to the crisis. The idea was that the population would shrink. Nobody could have foreseen that it would grow by almost 700,000 people from 2015, mainly through immigration.
In the end, there was no ‘orderly transfer’ of tasks to the provinces and municipalities, the book Spatial Planning says. Housing construction has been paralyzed by local “disputes” about where building is allowed or not, says De Jonge. And it seems as if all ‘crises’ – from asylum reception to nitrogen – are coming for Rutte IV at the same time.
The Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment is not back, but the Ministry of the Interior does have a minister with plans for a major renovation of the Netherlands. “The national direction in space and public housing must be returned,” says Hugo de Jonge, “so we will do that too.”