The Netherlands was traditionally lauded for its planning system, including its land policies. In this chapter, we argue that the picture has always been more nuanced and local planning practice has always been more pragmatic; it was an ambiguous utopia at best. Moreover, the Netherlands has experienced a transition over the last thirty years from active land policy with land ownership of municipalities towards facilitative (or passive) land policy in which developers typically own land and are active in initiating zoning changes. The latter can also be couched as ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ of landowners, where distinctions between the private and public become fuzzy, sometimes in problematic ways. We illustrate this conundrum through the case study of Rijnenburg, a polder close to the city of Utrecht, which has been a ‘planning battle scene’ for over thirty years, with different claims—housing, renewable energy, climate adaptation—and its concomitant representatives competing for prevalence. We conclude that the current system of public–private fuzziness is particularly vulnerable in times of a polycrisis. This predicament calls for a thorough consideration of long-term consequences, for instance in relation to climate adaption and urban development.

Zoning is one of the key roles of land use regulation by the state. In engaging with this land use regulation, developers do not stay put and passively await rules to be imposed upon them. Instead, they proactively seek to (co)produce new rules or change existing rules to their advantage: they are ‘institutional entrepreneurs.’ We analyze how institutional entrepreneurship strategies play out empirically in Rijnenburg, a large greenfield site located southwest of the city of Utrecht. We find a complex and reciprocal interrelationship between planning decisions on the one hand and strategies of developers on the other.

In the reality of planning practice, where there is usually no a priori ‘right’ substantive conception of justice to guide and evaluate decision making, conceptions are negotiated between stakeholders. Moreover, these conceptions vary in space and time. The existing academic discussion on justice in planning provides limited insight in and guidance for how to navigate the plurality of conceivable and valid substantive conceptions of justice that may be articulated and applied. To address this gap, we introduce a dynamic justice framework, which looks at how the different elements of justice (‘materials of justice’) are being articulated, connected, and changed in discourses and institutions. We believe this dynamic justice framework helps to make explicit the conceptions of justice in planning practice and the processes that shape them.

De kamerbrief Water en Bodem sturend (vanaf nu WBS, zie Harbers, 2022) markeert een trendbreuk. De overkoepelende gedachte is dat ruimtegebruik veel meer passend moet worden bij de water- en bodemcondities, in plaats van het uitgangspunt dat het natuurlijk systeem plooibaar is naar de wensen van de mens. Een ander belangrijk uitgangspunt is dat er niet afgewenteld mag worden; niet op toekomstige generaties en niet van privaat naar publiek. De ‘trendbreuk’ is hierbij overigens niet zozeer dat de principes van water en bodem sturend nieuw zijn, maar dat we er, zo is de belofte, nu echt iets mee gaan doen in de ruimtelijke ordening (zie ook het interview met Liz van Duin).

The current ecological crisis will transform the face and fate of cities. Neighbourhoods for the Future is based on the conviction that we should rethink cities from the ambit of the neighbourhood. It revisits the neighbourhood as the designated scale and arena to build our urban futures. The neighbourhood is small enough to be tangible, yet big enough to make a difference. In order for neighbourhoods to really work, residents need to be engaged and the tactics should be embedded within a wider social policy, if we want thriving cities.

By introducing the concepts of neighbourhood arrangements and ecologies, based on examples in Europe and North America, this book provides a new perspective on the relation between participants, resources, and rules, to spark change and prepare urbanites and policymakers for realizing their own sustainable neighbourhoods for the future.