The stagnating collaboration between municipalities in recent years has left regional area development without a helmsman to some extent. Major plans have often run aground due to a lack of direction, states Guus van Steenbergen in his PhD dissertation. According to him, provinces must therefore take the helm more often in regional area planning.

Around thirty years ago, a mandatory request from the national government led municipalities in the Arnhem-Nijmegen region to join forces. Their aim was to realise a substantial housing development and recreational area in an intermunicipal area. The Gelderland collaboration – with the province in the background and with social partners – seemed ideal for that. The refreshing approach was a great success during the planning stage but things took a turn for the worse during implementation. For that was when the national government shelved the plans to extend the A15 motorway and connect it to the A12. Without that lifeline from the project, the development of new business zones came to a dead end. To compensate for government budget cuts in the green area, the Gelderland province helped out by providing financial aid. “Also, everyone suddenly had to make their own arrangements, there was no framework to provide guidance on how implementation should be carried out”, says Van Steenbergen. “In cases like this, provinces have the legal responsibility to guide but often don’t do so. My plea is for them to take a more active approach to their role as area director.” The new Environment and Planning Act should make that possible.

Drivers

Van Steenbergen worked at regional level for the province of South Holland for almost his entire working life. After he retired, his background led him to try to establish by means of research the drivers behind the actions of provinces and how they substantiate them. His PhD dissertation entitled “Regional area development: the influence of the province on spatial planning in interurban areas” mainly focuses on area development: what do provinces do in the new reality of ‘network management’ and conversely, what do they fail to do?

According to the dissertation, this challenge was approached in different ways in the various regions and three cases are highlighted. For instance, while it was municipal partnerships that flourished in the Arnhem-Nijmegen and Eindhoven-Helmond regions, which was not the case in the Rotterdam-Zoetermeer-Gouda region where the province played a pioneering role for a long time. In this area, there were major plans for the development of a whole new town in the Green Heart. The Zuidplaspolder and environs were to have a total of around 25.000 houses. Did the area development here go better than in the Arnhem-Nijmegen region? No, the financial crisis in 2008 threw a spanner in the works: that was when the demand for housing collapsed and the province suddenly took a step backwards. When the national government then cut back on the planned large-scale green development, a lot of holes appeared in the overall plan, leaving a municipal project. The result: a lot less housing construction than previously planned.

Money

Van Steenbergen identifies a number of constants in the various regional plans that he studied in his research. First and foremost, the role of finance appears to be crucial. “In fact, money is much more important than the plan”, he says. “As soon as the money disappears, problems arise. The province can also play an important role when it comes to financial resources.” He also notes that the national government is still a very powerful party when it comes to regional developments, despite the decentralisation of spatial planning tasks which has been carried out since 2007. And that has everything to do with the fact that for the most part, funding must still come from The Hague.

He also identifies that there is no integral implementation toolbox for realising regional plans which makes it unclear who is responsible for what and who pays for what. This is one of the reasons why land acquisition processes are so difficult and regional development funds are difficult to acquire, which is why plans quickly get bogged down. According to Van Steenbergen, this can be remedied by introducing a regional implementation tool that enables provinces, municipalities and water boards to tackle implementation together. He considers this crucial at a time when we not only have a housing shortage to resolve but also a sustainability challenge, a nitrogen and PFAS crisis and stricter requirements in respect of the Water Framework Directive. “Take an integrated approach to implementation. You can bring existing financial instruments together in the process. Then money, land and plans are all held together”, says Van Steenbergen. “That provides the opportunity to plan the overall implementation as a whole.”

Headerphoto: The new Westergouwe housing estate southwest of Gouda is built in the Zuidplaspolder, one of the deepest polders in the Netherlands.

Published: October 2022

More information

Guus van Steenbergen defended his dissertation on 22 September 2022 in the Aula Building at TU Delft.

His dissertation ‘Regionale gebiedsontwikkeling: De invloed van de provincie op ruimtelijke planning in tussenstedelijke gebieden’ can be found here.