The Renewal of Decision-Making Processes in Environmental Planning in The Netherlands

Jelger Visser

In the wake of the acknowledgment that issues regarding the physical environment are more complex that once thought, in The Netherlands policy approaches are changing, visibly and rapidly. In a broad sense these changes are in line with a change from sectoral, generic and framework-setting policy (so called command-and-control planning), toward more integrated and locally sensitive policies (so called shared governance). These changes might even lead to a radical shift form ‘centralised’ to ‘decentralised,’ and ‘generic’ to ‘specific’ planning. These changes are furthermore characterized by new and innovative concepts, including, among others, area-specific policy, and integrated area-oriented approaches, and also policy supporting tools, which are characterized by the same shift. They characterize the fact that generic and centralized policies are no longer prevalent and more bottom-up and locally sensitive approaches thrive.

Environmental planning in The Netherlands now no longer concentrates on meeting functional and generic standards, and no longer simply about meeting functional-spatial claims. More and more the quality of the physical environment is considered the main objective. Concepts like livability, quality of life and sustainability have become more popular not only with regard to policy approaches, but also policy supporting methods. Along with this, the involvement of local parties and their knowledge, values and opinions, is being considered important. Politically the concepts of sustainability and livability might be accepted; the translation of sustainability and livability into environmental planning practice is still difficult. A clear and straightforward description of what these concepts exactly stand for is not available.

The main focus of this paper is the question of how local and regional authorities can cope with sustainability and livability in achieving a better quality of the physical environment. The basic premise to this paper is the recognition of the importance of different actors in decision-making processes. Two connected reasons for this importance can be presented. First, and obviously, actors actually can influence the outcomes of those processes. Second, these actors regularly have very diverse views of sustainability. The fuzzy character of sustainability prevents it from being interpreted in a more or less conform way.

The argument here is that what nowadays is lacking is a systematic insight into the consequences of decentralization in the application of sustainability on a local scale. Especially considering the important role actors play in applying this concept on a local scale, such insight is necessary. After all, decentralization implies more involvement of local parties. From this point of view it is also necessary to throw a light on recent developed policy supporting tools. In this paper, the aim is to provide this insight.