Introducing the Randstad: A polycentric metropolis

The Randstad and polycentric regions generally are not only vehicles to create critical economic mass. The geography of the Randstad is unmistakably deltaic, with expanses of flat open land crisscrossed by watercourses and historic windmills that remain from a former network of more than 10,000. The development of extensive physical and soft...

Governance and power in the metropolitan regions of the Randstad

This chapter focuses on the nature and powers of governance arrangements in two Dutch metropolitan areas, both situated in the Randstad: the Metropolitan Region Amsterdam (Metropoolregio Amsterdam) and the Metropolitan Region Rotterdam The Hague (Metropoolregio Rotterdam Den Haag ). It considers the power of process by analysing the actor...

Randstad: From a spatial planning concept to a place name

This chapter seeks to unravel the history of the Randstad planning concept and focuses on the national level as a lot of the thinking about the Randstad has been carried out within national planning organisations and trickled down to provincial and municipal planning. It begins with a short section about the very first visualisation of the...

Conclusion and outlook

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows how specific advantages given to cities, for instance trading and taxation rights in medieval times, had a clear influence on the economy of cities and through that, on population growth. It also shows how so-called...

The process of metropolization in megacity-regions

This chapter presents the concept of metropolization, defined as the dynamics of interaction between spatial-functional, political-institutional and cultural-symbolic integration processes across city-regions, which transform these fragmented territories into coherent metropolitan systems. The authors first discuss the arguments in favour of...