Since time immemorial, one can recognize the favourable effect of infrastructure. Since ages, infrastructures have structured the form, dimensions and direction of urbanisation. Bearing this in mind, it is striking how infrastructural works are planned and designed. Often new infrastructure is looked upon as a derived function, as if it only serves to interconnect point A and B, while nothing happens in between. The present highway and High-Speed Train planning in the Netherlands is exemplary for this practice. Nevertheless, this practice becomes also more and more distressed, while favourable and catalyst effects of infrastructures becomes more and more manifest in the rising network society. Here, one can not only recognize a favourable effect of infrastructures themselves, but also of how they are used in developing virtual networks, which arise with this. It means that the catalyst effect of infrastructures have to be investigated on these three levels. This essay deals with four new challenges corresponding with these views. In a certain way, one can also see these challenges as a particular extension of the four attention points of the four directors of the Ministry of Transport and Public Works concerning the preparation of their new policy document. In this respect the essay is focused on future policymaking. (A)
Samenvatting