A report on the spatial planning in the Netherlands : experience and the future

The experience of a country in spatial planning often suggests useful ideas to other comparable countries. This report introduces past experience and future direction of the national spatial planning in a small European kingdom, the Netherlands. The Dutch Cabinet recently proposed the National Spatial Planning draft for the coming generation, which is now put on public display towards a definite legalization. The extensive debates between planning agency, local governments, political groups and public are involving a time-consuming but significant revision of the original draft. This will result in the critical review of a variety of aspects of the planning fundamentals including not only the planning instruments but also the planning agencies and the processes of planning and review themselves, each of which we could refer to as a reference in the context of the current implementation of the National Spatial Planning Policy Act in Korea. The report is organized as follows. First, a brief introduction describes the recent changes in Dutch society. Then, the Dutch spatial planning agencies and instruments and planning procedures are summarized. Given the background information, the past experience of Dutch spatial planning is reviewed, and the direction of the newly proposed national Spatial Policy Document is discussed, which is followed by some concluding remarks.