Urban densification is crucial for sustainable urban growth. Yet, its implementation often leads to local conflicts. To understand the interplay between private and public interests, we analysed media reports on densification policies and projects in Switzerland from 2009 and 2019, a period when Switzerland revised its Spatial Planning Act, limiting land take and promoting densification. Our results reveal a disconnect between private and public interests. Residents and other established stakeholders tend to dominate the public debate. Arguments in the face of impending building often reflect conflicting social values related to distributive justice, such as rising housing costs, loss of identity of place, and erosion of social cohesion. NIMBYism, the “Not In My Backyard” phenomenon, is insufficient to explain criticism or the rejection of urban densification measures. Other factors, such as ecological concerns, have gained impact. Moreover, our study highlights that the Swiss direct democratic instrument of popular initiatives tends to stimulate public debate and, thereby, has the potential to better bridge public interests with the effects of densification policies on residents and communities.

In many cities, there has been renewed interest over the last 30 years in densification as part of wider efforts to combat urban sprawl. In daily practice, however, densification is a contested process because of its redistributive effects. Next to potential environmental advantages, it produces both benefits and losses for different individuals and households. The redistributive effects are an expression of conflicts between environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability. We show that the latter is heavily impacted: if densification projects are not designed to the needs of people who are actually supposed to benefit from it—the residents—low-income groups are at risk of social displacement. This scenario is highly unsustainable. By using a neo-institutional approach and comparative case study methodology conducted in Switzerland, we analyze the institutional rules and the involved actors’ strategies when dealing with densification projects. We explain the mechanisms leading to the loss of social qualities when competing with economic interests of investors and authorities.

The struggle of cities to achieve quantitative housing objectives can partly be explained by the struggle to cope with increasing value conflicts with other (qualitative) policy objectives, including the realization of affordable housing, climate adaptive areas, inclusive neighborhoods, and high-quality public spaces. In public debate in the Netherlands, too high ambitions and a ‘piling-up’ of policy objectives are often mentioned as causes of non-conformance of quantitative housing objectives. However, despite such non-conformance, a plan or policy may still function well by informing the decision-making process and invoking scrutiny of conflicting objectives. This paper aims to understand how municipalities cope with the implementation of housing developments with pluralistic policy objectives. Therefore, the performance of the policy objective to accelerate the production of housing is studied by exploring how value conflicts between this quantitative and qualitative objectives are addressed. A survey among Dutch municipalities and two additional in-depth case studies reveal that the non-conformance of the acceleration of the housing production not only results from exogenous processes, but is also a result of accumulating policy decisions favouring qualitative ambitions. The case studies reveal that municipalities especially struggle with trade-offs between qualitative and quantitative objectives. This result shows the relevance of additional research that focus on value conflicts in public policy implementation processes.

De roep om een meer centrale en sturende rol van de Rijksoverheid op het gebied van ruimtelijke ontwikkeling in Nederland neemt al enige tijd toe. Op het eerste gezicht lijkt er een brede consensus te bestaan. Maar wat zijn precies de problemen die vragen om regie vanuit de nationale overheid? En wat houdt die regierol precies in? In dit artikel analyseren we de bijdragen in landelijke kranten over de regierol van de overheid, om inzicht te krijgen in wat voor regierol gewenst wordt en waarom dat een noodzakelijke of effectieve oplossing zou zijn.

What is seen as just in a society largely depends on public reasoning, which occurs in public debates. This paper analyses public debates around land use and densification in Switzerland and The Netherlands to understand how private and public interests interrelate in the tensions of urban growth. The paper is based on the hypothesis that while a consensus on the desirability of densification may exist in public, its implementation may cause direct tensions on a local level where it affects the quality of the immediate living environment. Therefore, insights into the acceptance of densification at a local level are considered important factors for successfully implementing densification projects.

This paper discusses the impact of the Dutch housing-policy reforms since 2011 in terms of housing opportunities for middle-income households in Amsterdam. The paper ends with a call to focus on securing affordable housing opportunities for different groups instead of a focus on market dynamism and responsiveness. While promoting affordable housing options for all income groups will increase freedom and security, the pursuit of labour mobility through market dynamism and responsiveness may also result in measures that harm welfare and well-being.

Fietsen is in transitie van een voornamelijk lokale naar een ook regionale modaliteit. De grote populariteit van de elektrische fiets vormt de drijfveer om snelfietsroutes en campagnes te ontwikkelen, maar wie is verantwoordelijk voor de regionale fietser?

In het Kamerdebat in januari 2020 kreeg de woningnood een plek op de politieke agenda. Terecht, er is sprake van een woonprobleem, maar met het aanwijzen van Valkenburg en Almere Pampus als bouwlocaties zijn we er niet. Een gedeelde woonvisie voor de lange termijn ontbreekt. Het bijzondere is dat er wordt gesproken van een wooncrisis, maar tegelijkertijd woont Nederland ruimer dan ooit. Wij pleiten naast nieuwe locaties voor een ruimtedieet: slimmer en efficiënter wonen in bestaande gebouwen.

Het in april 2020 verschenen rapport Ruimte voor Wonen (RvW) maakt deel uit van de Brede Maatschappelijke Heroverwegingen van kabinet Rutte III. Over de volle breedte van de collectieve sector zijn zestien maatschappelijke opgaven geïdentificeerd, waarvoor implicaties van diverse beleidsopties in kaart worden gebracht. Het uiteindelijke doel is om in de toekomst onderbouwde keuzes mogelijk te maken door inzicht te verschaffen in effectieve beleids- en uitvoeringsopties en de mogelijke gevolgen daarvan. Het is goed nieuws dat er een rapport ligt met een weloverwogen analyse van de huidige problemen en opties voor de toekomst. Op 17 maart 2021 vinden Tweede Kamerverkiezingen plaats. Wonen staat hoog op de politieke agenda en speelt straks vermoedelijk een belangrijke rol in de formatie. Het RvW-rapport biedt een basis voor geïnformeerde beleidsvorming, maar die basis is helaas nog onvolledig. Het 1M Homes-initiatief van de Faculteit Bouwkunde van de TU Delft wil een bijdrage leveren aan een visie op de toekomstige woonopgave. Allereerst door te reageren op de diagnose en de opties voor de toekomst uit het RvW-rapport. De kern van dit commentaar is dat RvW een redelijk gefocust, maar beperkt, perspectief biedt. Het is volgens ons van groot belang voor de lange termijn om die blik te verbreden: het gaat niet alleen om nieuwbouw, maar zeker ook over aanpassing van de bestaande woningvoorraad, de verdeling van de bestaande woonruimte, de kwaliteit van de woonomgeving en bredere welvaartseffecten van verstedelijking.

Covid-19 and especially the extreme measures of the lockdown in response to the virus, have exposed existing housing inequalities. They revealed how, in the 21st century, households still live in poor and insecure housing conditions exposing them to increased physical and mental health risks. In the Netherlands, where we as authors are based, similar inequalities and injustices in the housing sector can be observed. How can the wide variety of impacts of the coronavirus be understood, and what should be done to address them? Justice theories offer a valuable framework. By spotlighting the impacts of the coronavirus crisis on four households who are differently affected, we explore different critical perspectives to analyse the current crisis more coherently.

Housing policy changes in the Netherlands have been in line with OECD and IMF policy advice to increase market dynamism by downsizing the large social rental sector. The impact of such policies on households, however, is rarely acknowledged. Therefore, in this article, distributive effects on social housing tenants in Amsterdam between 2004 and 2014 are evaluated against two standards for distributive justice: sufficiency and priority. These standards befit the policy aim to provide adequate (sufficient) housing for households with a certain need (priority). The analysis shows housing policies have amplified the impacts of the global financial crisis on households. The occurrence of sufficiency increased significantly until 2008, but decreased thereafter. In regards of the priority standard more households with a significant need benefitted from social housing after 2008. However, many of these households still do not meet the sufficiency threshold. While spatial patterns remained rather stable, the impact has been greater in the areas with already relatively low residual incomes.

Rapid expansion of settlements and related infrastructures is a global trend that comes with severe environmental, economic, and social costs. Steering urbanization toward well-balanced compactness is thus acknowledged as an important strategic orientation in UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG-11) via the SDG-indicator “Ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate.” The EU’s simultaneous commitment to being “a frontrunner in implementing […] the SDGs” and to striving for “no net land take until 2050” calls for relating the concepts of land consumption and land take to each other. Drawing on an EU-centred questionnaire study, a focus group and a literature review, we scrutinize definitions of land consumption and land take, seeking to show how they are interrelated, and questioning the comparability of respective indicators. We argue that conceptual clarifications and a bridging of the two notions are much needed, and that the precision required for definitions and applications is context-dependent. While approximate understandings may suffice for general communication and dissemination objectives, accurate and consistent interpretations of the discussed concepts seem indispensable for monitoring and reporting purposes. We propose ways of addressing existing ambiguities and suggest prioritizing the term land take in the EU context. Thereby, we aim to enhance conceptual clarity around land consumption and land take—a precondition for solidly informing respective policies and decisions.

How do municipalities strategically use land policy to develop land for housing? The development of housing is a challenge for many European countries, though the scale and time of it differs. Issues are not always about the absolute number of houses that need to be supplied in a country. The distribution and quality of houses affect the demand for housing. Land policy determines where and how future developments take place, and as a result, it has a considerable impact on both supply and demand of housing. Municipalities use different strategies of land policy to pursue housing goals. This paper aims to explore the rationalities underpinning such strategies of land policy. Therefore, a theory on pluralism – Cultural Theory – is employed to understand municipal strategies in different contexts, i.e. Germany (Ruhr region), Belgium (Flanders), and Netherlands. Applying Cultural Theory to land policy results in four ideal-typical strategies of active, passive, reactive, and protective land policies. Despite the fact that the decisions of municipalities are made within (or constrained by) their institutional environments (i.e. national/regional planning systems, development cultures, etc.), we found that there are key similarities between the strategies of the studied municipalities regardless of their different institutional environments.

Volgens prognoses van ABF Research is er tot 2035 behoefte aan een miljoen extra woningen. Grootschalige industriële woningbouw kan bijdragen aan het terugdringen van het tekort. Dit heeft in het verleden echter de positie van bouwes versterkt en daarbij zeggenschap van bewoners en aanpasbaarheid van de woningvoorraad beperkt. Het 1M Homes-initiatief van de TU Delft onderzoekt onder meer hoe Open Bouwen, in combinatie met digitalisering en automatisering, kan bijdragen aan een duurzame oplossing voor het woningtekort en tegelijkertijd bewoners zeggenschap kan geven.

Land-policy instruments are important to local governments for the implementation of densification. This article explores the factors behind local governments’ motives that determine the use of specific land-policy instruments to achieve densification. The aim is to increase understanding of how available land-policy instruments are applied in practice by local governments to realise housing development at inner-urban locations. In-depth analysis comparing two Dutch municipalities shows that common underlying factors explain municipal land-policy applications, while available instruments are used differently. Insights into these factors help to explain local governments’ behaviour regarding land-policy instruments.