News item | 17-05-2022 | 18:00
Space in the Netherlands is scarce, while spatial tasks are great. The urgent societal challenges such as the housing shortage, the quality of nature, the transition of agriculture and making the energy supply more sustainable all have a major spatial impact. The scarcity of space means that central government has to regain control in the spatial domain: to choose, to allocate and to enable a fair outcome in this allocation issue. That is what Minister De Jonge for Housing and Spatial Planning wrote to the Senate and House of Representatives today. This lays the foundation for the development of national spatial policy. With this letter, the cabinet underlines that national spatial planning is back in the Netherlands.
Minister De Jonge: ‘The Netherlands is a small country with big ambitions and even bigger challenges. The spatial challenges facing us are immense – demographic growth and what it means for housing and urban development, the transition in agriculture, the transition in our energy supply. We are on the eve of a major renovation. In order to steer these in the right direction, we have to take back control of spatial planning. It is a matter of stewardship, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to think several generations ahead and make the right choices.’
National choices
Some of the choices will have to be made at national level. The major urgent tasks are given shape through the various national programs of the various ministries in the physical domain. Not everything is possible and not everything is possible everywhere. More than in recent years, the cabinet will have to make its own choices if national tasks interfere with each other spatially or if the spatial quality requires this. Spatial structuring choices are made in the programs.
Provincial Packages
The twelve provinces are being asked to spatially translate, integrate and combine the national tasks and objectives with decentralized tasks. As of 1 October, the tasking will be formulated per policy domain, after which the provinces will put together the spatial puzzle per province. On 1 July 2023, this spatial puzzle will provide insight into whether the implementation of the programs is spatially possible in the province concerned or whether additional national choices are necessary. Reciprocal agreements on this in October 2023 form the spatial arrangement per province.
Area-oriented packages
In addition to spatial management per province, the focus is on area-oriented management. For a number of regions it is clear that the national tasks stack up in such a way that it is necessary to order and prioritize them according to area. These are the NOVEX areas, which will be re-purposed or redesigned. A number of areas were already known as NOVI areas or as areas with major urbanization challenges: Amsterdam North Sea Canal Area, the Groene Hart, the Port of Rotterdam, North Sea Port District, Southern Randstad, MRA, Utrecht, Zwolle region, Groningen-Assen, De Peel and South Limburg, Urban Brabant, Arnhem-Nijmegen-Foodvalley and NOVEX area Groningen. Two new areas have been added: the Schiphol region and the Lelylijn.