Nuevos conceptos de planeamiento espacial estratégico del Randstand holandés

As in many metropolitan regions of Europe, the town and country planners in the most advanced urban region of Holland (Randstad) are facing an increasingly dynamic form of urban development.The current transformation of urban forms (throughout urban Europe) into diverse polycentric configurations, at a metropolitan level, is not merely the latest whim in urban growth but is instead a result of the complex new worldwide and interregional dimensions of social and economic flows which exist, in different proportions and on different scales, in urban spaces.With regards metropolitan planning, it is essential to create and rejuvenate the institutions’ ability to face growing spatial complexity at a regional and metropolitan level. In this sense, Dutch planners are now facing a dilemma. One tendency consists of increasing the ability to limit active planning in order to further development at a regional level, above all by giving new legal and financial tools to strategic regional plans (e.g. regional policy and development bodies).This tendency may lead to institutional conflicts within the varied institutional landscape of Holland’s urban regions.The second option does not choose to broaden the governing powers of regional planning but rather to increase its joint strategic capacity by improving coordination and communication between intermediate regional planning bodies.The authors highlight that the second option is better suited to the mutability of urban spaces