30 years of spatial planning and infrastructure policies in the Netherlands: a success? Since the late 1960s Dutch national authorities have pursued a policy of compact urbanisation in various forms, though with different policy goals and benefits that have not been well understood. This paper described a first attempt in establishing a methodology and evaluation framework for analysing the effectiveness of the national spatial planning policies. Firstly, alternative visions of the Netherlands are developed describing what the Netherlands would have looked like in the year 2000 if since 1970 the massive interventions in urban development had not been implemented, and if the extensive motorway network anticipated in the late 1960s had been realised. The impacts of the scenarios were computed and evaluated with a GIS based land-use/transport interaction model using a range of land-use, transport, accessibility, social and ecological indicators. The preliminary analysis shows that Dutch land-use and infrastructure policies have been successful in containing urban sprawl and preserving nature areas. The land-use policies as implemented in the period 1970-2000 certainly have contributed to the land-use and transport related intentions of the Dutch national government: they have contributed to open space conservation, and have resulted in less car use and related environmental impacts compared to a more liberal land-use policy and compared to the situation with the very dense motorway network as proposed in the late 1960s. (Author/publisher)
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