Land Policy for Rural Development in the European Union and its Impact on Access to Land

The concentration of farmland has potentially a negative impact on planning for local rural development as it impedes access to land for other rural initiatives. Land policies in the European Union aiming to reserve lands for local communities are constrained by principles of the EU single market, such as the free movement of capital and the freedom of establishment. Especially in several Central and Eastern European member states, the European Commission has critically reviewed policies to shield lands from the single market. This paper reviews and analysis this issue in relation to the planning for rural communities

The financial estimates and results of servicing land in the Netherlands

Past research has revealed that governments are often tempted to underestimate the costs and overestimate the benefits of infrastructure projects. However, an analysis of local-government estimates and accounts reveals that servicing land by local authorities in the Netherlands is an exception to this general phenomenon. The profits made by local authorities from land development are growing, while the costs, revenues, and results are, on average, underestimated by local authorities. This may have consequences for the explanation of budget overruns and the solutions that may be effective in countering this problem. It is not always necessary for there to be one single moment in the planning process at which a fully informed choice can be made; an alternative is to leave room for flexible, piecemeal decision making.

Stagnation in housing production: another success in the Dutch ‘planner’s paradise’?

There are a number of different criteria for measuring the success of plans in planning. In the planning literature there is a debate about the criterion of conformance (that is, whether spatial development is according to plan) as opposed to performance (that is, whether the plan has shown the way to better decisionmaking), which is, in fact, different from performance measurement. In this paper both criteria are applied to measure the success of Dutch national concentration policies in the “Fourth Memorandum on Spatial Planning—Plus”. The author shows that the urban containment policies conform well to the plan but perform badly in terms of improving current decisionmaking on the stagnation of housing production in the Netherlands. Moreover, the present stagnation of housing production is planned stagnation. With this result, the author shows that conformance and performance are independent criteria for measuring planning success, and that plans (as set out in the “Fourth Memorandum on Spatial Planning—Plus”) with high conformance may still perform badly on the performance criterion.

The impact of abolishing social-housing grants on the compact-city policy of Dutch municipalities

Building on previously developed land is a top priority in Dutch compact-city policies. During the 1980s government grants supported building on these locations. In 1990 nonsubsidised housing accounted for only 5% of the housing programme for these inner-city sites. In 1995, as a result of the transformation of the welfare state in the Netherlands, the government abolished grants for the construction of social housing. This had a massive impact on the housing programme; and subsidies, as a proportion of the cost of infrastructure provision, dropped from 68% in 1990 to 30% in 2000. These changes have had a major impact on the role of municipalities and the powers they need to provide new housing on previously developed land. The municipalities’ lack of powers and the new market conditions are contributing to the present stagnation of housebuilding in the Netherlands, and both of these factors influence Dutch compact-city policy.

Reterritorialisation of agricultural activities in land-use and food planning: comparing the Netherlands and France

The reterritorialisation of agricultural activities (RAA) consists of reinforcing local food production and its diversification activities oriented toward local consumers. RAA helps shape the local food system, which is an increasingly studied topic in the planning field. However, institutional impacts on planning approaches for RAA remain unknown. This study examines this question by comparing land-use and food planning in Dutch and French cases, where France defines food planning via national law and the Netherlands does not. Through analysis of planning documents and semi-structured interviews, we identified planning goals and instruments, and analysed governance models. We then linked these three components to understand institutional impacts. Our empirical findings reveal that regarding planning policies on RAA, there are differences between the two countries in terms of focused action fields, planning instruments, and links between land-use and food planning. Our results show that the dominance of state-local relationships in France and civil society-government relationships in the Netherlands has a significant effect on planning approaches. This study supports the need for an emphasis on institutional design for effective planning for RAA