Barrie Needham
Dutch land use planning
Neat and tidy housing estates, thriving town centres, big development projects with exciting architecture, ambitious redevelopment schemes, a manicured countryside, huge water-defence works: the Netherlands is well known for these. Less well known is how they come about. This book describes, analyses and explains how the Dutch plan and manage land use, and the link between the invisible processes and the visible end product. What are the basic assumptions behind all those activities? What are the explicit aims of land-use planning and to what extent are they achieved? Who carries out that planning and with what powers? What are the formal principles and what the informal practices? What do the Dutch themselves think about their own land-use planning?
The thorough and systematic way in which these questions are answered make this book valuable for all concerned with Dutch land-use planning, natives and foreigners alike.