Understanding the Dutch market for industrial areas with System Dynamics modeling

Industrial areas have become a prime theme in the urban policy debates in the Netherlands. From an economic perspective, Dutch industrial areas are important and successful. However, from a spatial perspective, several problems arise. In recent years, a lot of new areas have been developed on the relative scarce Dutch territory, and a large share of the existing areas has a low and decreasing spatial quality. In the current policy debates, several solutions are proposed for the occurring problems. In this article, we discuss the proposed solutions and governing interventions, and we pose that most of these solutions will not have an optimal effect because the Dutch market for industrial areas functions as a complex system, in which governing interventions will only be successful when the underlying processes support them. In this article, the Dutch market for industrial areas is regarded and reproduced as a complex system, employing the principles of the System Dynamics theory. Using the developed System Dynamics model, the most important system’s leverage points are distinguished, and recommendations are presented for optimizing the Dutch industrial area market.