Dutch spatial planning and infrastructure policies, with special reference to the promotion of compact urban development, are well known in Europe. Since the late 1960s 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. The main aim in the 1970s was to contain urban sprawl and preserve open agricultural and nature areas, and landscapes, while in the 1980s and 1990s spatial and transport planning were focused on restricting private car use, and reducing energy use and emissions. Although the benefits of a compact urban form have long been under discussion in the literature, they have only been the subject of heavy debate in the Netherlands in the last few years. Nevertheless, the effects of Dutch compact urban development policies are still not very well understood. Essentially, what is lacking here is a reference situation describing what the Netherlands would have looked like if the massive interventions in urban development had not been implemented, and resulting land-use, transport, economic, social and ecological impacts. This paper describes the first step in establishing a methodology and evaluation framework for analysing the effectiveness of Dutch national spatial planning policies. The study carried out here consisted of three phases. In the first phase, a dynamic GIS-based, land-use-transport interaction model, Environment Explorer, was developed to simulate land-use and transport developments on a yearly basis from 1970 to 2000. This model has two novel features. The first one simulates land cover and activities for the entire territory of the Netherlands, linking spatial processes and interactions between land use and transport at different spatial levels (i.e. national, regional, sub-regional and local). The second uses the theory of Cellular Automata to simulate spatial processes at a detailed spatial level (25 ha cells) on a yearly basis. The second phase saw the development of three alternative land-use and transport infrastructure scenarios for the Netherlands: (i) one, assuming no spatial policies, to restrict urban sprawl and preserve open agricultural and nature areas in the 1970-2000 period, (ii) one, assuming realisation of an extensive motorway network proposed in the Second Report on Physical Planning from the late 1960s, to facilitate the expected demand for car travel, and (iii) the third formed by combining the previous two. In the third, and final step, the impacts of the three scenarios were computed and evaluated with the Environment Explorer, using a broad evaluation framework for land-use, transport, accessibility, social and ecological indicators. The analysis showed Dutch land-use and infrastructure policies as being successful in containing urban sprawl, preserving nature areas and restricting the growth of car traffic and emissions. Without compact urban development policies, urban sprawl would likely have been greater, resulting in less efficient use of land (lower housing and employment densities), and car use would have been higher at the cost of alternative modes. Emission and noise levels, as well as the fragmentation of nature areas, would have been higher, but congestion levels relatively lower. These effects are also felt more strongly if the demand for car travel is facilitated by expanding the Dutch motorway network. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
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