Spatial Strategies in land use planning and housing location in the Netherlands

The Netherlands, with 16.3 million of population, is the largest of the smaller countries of the European Union. Ethnic minorities accounted for two thirds of this population growth. The three largest cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, have 1.8 million people together. This population composition, and the consequent cities development, has dominated a great deal of the political and societal debate in the country during the last few years. The heart of the relatively stable Dutch urban system is in the western part of the country, where the ‘big four’, together with their suburbs and some towns of medium size, form the Randstad Holland” (Van der Berg, 1998). The National Physic Planning considers 13 urban nodes or region, now extended. This is typical of the national preference for equal treatment and aversion to selectiveness (Van der Valk, 2002). Physically and economically, the Randstad conurbation constitutes the core of the Netherlands. Six and half million people live and work there. The predominantly rural character of the Green Heartland is unique to the Randstand, enclosed as it is within the strongly urbanized ring shape structure . This sensibility in planning decision making, create conditions for growing consensus regarding the central place of integrated Land Use and Housing location strategy development in establishing more efficient and sustainable urban environments. However, empirical evidence shows that such integration is hard to achieve in daily planning practice, due to many institutional barriers and substantive differences