Environmental Planning in the Netherlands: Too Good to be True

From Command-and-Control Planning to Shared Governance

Gert de Roo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351939553
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Netherlands is one of the most prominent and innovative countries in the field of environmental planning. Over the past decade, its government has introduced such ground-breaking schemes as Integrated Environmental Zoning, the City-Environment Project, the Bubble Concept and Policy Concepts and new approaches to coping with noise, odours, soil pollution, air pollution and safety issues. These initiatives and policy tools reflect a rapidly changing and decentralising environmental policy, which contrasts with more conventional environmental ideologies. However, at present little is known of these policies in the international arena. De Roo shows how and why, in recent years, the country's planning system has moved away from its traditional 'top-down' structure. The resulting changes have had far-reaching consequences for the traditional principles of Dutch environmental policy. In addition, measures for compensating excessive environmental loads are now open to discussion and environmental quality is a subject of negotiation among stakeholders. All these developments mean that environmental policy-making has become more closely integrated with local initiatives that focus on general location-specific qualities. In this book, this development is referred to as 'tailor-made comprehensive planning', which relates closely to the local context, is area-specific, situation-dependent, and embraces shared governance.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Conflicts, Decision-Making and Complexity in Environmental Planning

No ‘invisible hand’ can be relied on to produce a good arrangement of the whole from a combination of separate treatments of the parts. It is, therefore, necessary that an authority of wider reach should intervene and should tackle the collective problems of beauty, of air and light (A.C. Pigou 1920; 196).

1.1 Enschede, 13 May 2000

The nightmare began at three o’clock in the afternoon. The first signs of a drama stained the clear blue sky. The billowing white smoke, bangs and the crack of fireworks seemed totally out of place. Those people who, despite the fine weather, had been sitting indoors were drawn outside by the spectacle. Somewhere in the north of the city, something was wrong. A few minutes after half past three, two enormous explosions transformed the Roombeek neighbourhood into a disaster area. The SE Fireworks factory had been blown sky high, taking with it most of the surrounding residential area. Television reports showed the full extent of the inferno. Hard figures confirmed the tragedy: 500 homes were destroyed or seriously damaged; 1500 homes suffered moderate damage, and 500 people were injured. Twenty-one people lost their lives, but the figure would have been much higher if more people had been inside their homes, rather than outside making the most of the beautiful weather on a free Saturday afternoon, watching the strange, prolonged firework display. The area was a pre-war neighbourhood, with social housing located around industrial areas that cannot entirely conceal the decline of the textile industry. The situation would have been even worse if the explosion had affected the six thousand litres of ammonia stored at the nearby Grolsch brewery. As the smoke cleared and the gunpowder dispersed, revealing so much emptiness and suffering, many people began to ask how such a disaster could have happened in a residential area like this (De Lugt 2000).

This book describes the development of environmental planning in the Netherlands and its consequences for the ‘liveability’ of our day-to-day environment. The Enschede disaster holds up a mirror to environmental planning in the Netherlands, precisely at a time when all manner of proposals are being made in answer to the question whether we should adopt a more flexible approach towards environmental planning that is based to a greater extent on local circumstances. The Enschede disaster also tells us that environmental planning in the Netherlands, often seen as technically advanced and sophisticated in terms of policy, is actually 'too good to be true'

1.2 Reservations about Command-and-Control Planning

This book deals with the day-to-day aspects of environmental planning in the Netherlands, and these are also used as an example. The example is used to determine whether conflicts (i.e. environmental conflicts) can be categorised according to their complexity. This book also attempts to ascertain the extent to which categorisation by complexity determines the decision-making method. In order to address these questions, developments in environmental planning are considered as an empirical problem area. This book appears just as we have reached a turning point in Dutch environmental planning with regard to decision-making processes, and with regard to environmental quality issues, bottlenecks and conflicts. Traditionally, the theory and practice of environmental planning in the Netherlands have been based on universal, guideline-setting environmental standards. For three decades, the government set strict, quantitative standards for human activity, with the aim of ‘protecting’ the environment. This form of top-down policy works through to regional and local authorities by means of generic norms, and sets limits on other types of policy relating to the living environment. Strict generic standards are, however, increasingly coming under discussion.

Standards can provide a stimulus for human activity- for example, productivity norms - but can also halt or restrict human activity. Environmental standards were traditionally designed to do the latter. Environmental standards are limits defined through policy and are implemented in order to protect the ‘environment’ against harmful human activity. Setting standards is a highly arbitrary process, and therefore open to discussion. In this, environmental standards are no different from other restrictions or boundaries based on policy. On the contrary, in the 1990s, criticism of environmental standards led to a discussion on the ability of hierarchically imposed norms to solve conflicts on environmental quality and spatial planning. That discussion forms the thread of this book.

This discussion is not so much a discussion of environmental standards as an instrument or means, but rather as a definite policy goal. The application of a standard as a policy goal is a forceful means of achieving a desired level of quality. However, achieving acceptable environmental quality depends on more than environmental policy. Achieving national environmental goals also depends on developments in policy areas such as spatial planning and transport. Friction is inevitable, given that environmental goals are perceived as guideline-setting within these policy areas, and therefore repressive in terms of individual policy goals.

The repressive character of environmental standards is particularly evident in urban contexts. In the 1980s and 1990s, the bundling and concentration of activities formed the foundation for urban development, after periods in which this had been based on post-war reconstruction, ‘decentralisation’ and ‘bundled deconcentration’. The prevailing concept for urban development is now that of the ‘compact city’. Spatial concentration and compact urban development play a more than emphatic role, partly due to the substantial house-building commitments set out in the 1993 Fourth Policy Document on Physical Planning-Plus (VINEX) of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM), and the green urban buffer zones introduced in the Fifth Policy Document (VROM 1995). The various authorities see bundling and concentration, combined with an optimal mix of activities, and improved environmental quality in urban areas as the basic principles of urban development. However, “the evaluation of the first National Environmental Policy Plan […] revealed that policy designed to achieve dynamic, liveable towns and cities was greatly hampered by rigid environmental regulations that were not geared towards metropolitan reality” (VROM 1995; 5).

We are dealing with issues that are referred to in this book as environmental-/spatial conflicts. This type of conflict is often dealt with in a technical-functional way by converting environmental standards into distances that have to be maintained between environmentally sensitive and environmentally harmful functions, activities or areas. According to its critics, this generic, guideline-setting approach does not allow local authorities sufficient scope to make allowances for specific and often unique local circumstances when dealing with environmental/spatial conflicts. If these objections by local authorities are taken into account, it will no longer be a question only of environmental quality, and other aspects of the local living environment will also have to be considered. It will then no longer be possible to define or describe environmental/spatial conflicts in a straightforward, uniform way. Conflicts will no longer be categorised according to national environmental quality standards, but will be individually defined according to the local situation. This change will affect the technical-functional working method of the national government relating to the environment.

Generic, rigid environmental regulations are a product that - despite the Enschede firework disaster - radiates a great need for full control: command-and-control planning. Increasingly, such regulation is seen as an obstacle to urban development and quality. It creates friction between physical planning and the environment that is referred to as the ‘paradox of the compact city’ (TK 1993). This paradox has become a familiar battle cry in the call for change in hierarchical, guideline-setting environmental policy based on standards. Groningen City Council is not alone in claiming that “in many cases, the strict adherence to environmental regulations does not lead to optimal quality for inhabitants, or - even from an environmental point of view- to desired urban development” (Gemeente Groningen 1996; 25). The RARO (Spatial Planning Council) is not the only body to ask whether it ought to be possible for ‘lower-level authorities to deviate from centrally defined standards’ (RARO 1994).

In response to this, guideline-setting environmental standards are used to allow local authorities greater scope than was previously the case to pursue an integral, balanced and area-specific policy. This is also referred to as the ‘external integration’ of environmental policy whereby, at the various levels of government, environmental and physical planning policy in particular should grow towards each other and be mutually reinforcing. At the same time, central government makes way for local and regional authorities. The Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) maintains that “responsible people behave responsibly […]. Such an approach requires that central government keeps its distance within national aims and standards” (TK 1996; 2). In addition to this process of decentralisation, deregulation has been taking place over an even longer period of time. Deregulation should encourage greater initiative and creativity on the part of local authorities and nongovernmental bodies in dealing with matters relating to the local living environment. These processes of decentralisation and deregulation herald a change in what many perceive as the autocratic approach of government towards environmental planning.

The changes are best illustrated by the developments relating to two policy instruments, which were introduced by VROM more or less simultaneously and put to the test during the 1990s. The first change is the rise and fall of integrated environmental zoning as an instrument (§ 5.4 and Chapter 6), an advanced form of national standards policy. While this standard-setting policy was maligned, concepts such as consensus-building, participation and an open planning process began to gain ground. These are key concepts that are used, among others, in the ROM regional policy (§ 5.4). ROM designated-areas policy was introduced as an innovative policy approach at more or less at the same time as integrated environmental zoning. The ROM designated-areas policy is partly based on network-like strategies for ‘complex decision-making’ (§ 4.7). In contrast to integrated environmental zoning, the ROM regional policy enjoyed a positive reception. It is a policy in which environmental interests are no longer sacred, but considered in the light of other local interests. The aim of policy is no longer environmental quality at all costs; other integral considerations relating to the world in which we live also count. This policy approach is more appropriate for the location-specific - complex - circumstances of environmental/spatial conflicts: situation-specific overall planning with a shift towards shared governance.

A number of issues were widely discussed in the 1990s; in addition to the criticism of a national environmental zoning system mentioned above, and the embracing of the ROM regional policy as a ‘socially acceptable’ policy, proposals for a standard-setting odour-emissions policy were rejected twice in the Lower House, soil decontamination based on the multi-functionality criterion and the related system of standards was found to be unaffordable and time-consuming, and the Noise Abatement Act (WGH; Wet geluidhinder) was debated and will be withdrawn (see § 5.5). Nevertheless, the consensus surrounding the national City & Environment project suggests that, at the beginning of the 21 st century, standards will remain as the focus in the relationship between environmental policy and other policies relating to the physical environment. However, it is clear that the role of the standards system will change, although policy-maker and parliamentarians are hesitant about change following the Enschede disaster. The developments will not be restricted to the changing use of environmental standards; the role of the various authorities is also under discussion.

In retrospect, the Nunspeet conference of 30 November 1994 was a step in the transition from a hierarchic and guideline-setting environmental policy to one that is balanced against local circumstances. The Nunspeet conference was a policy-evaluating conference at which the various authorities¹ aired their grievances and set out their wishes relating to environmental policy. The purpose was to find a way out of the deadlock between hierarchical standards on the one hand, and the need for local circumstances to be taken into consideration on the other. “Standards relating to a particular field (e.g. external safety or noise pollution) can stand in the way of developments that are desirable based on other considerations (e.g. building in the vicinity of stations)” (VROM 1995; Appendix 1). The conclusion was a recognizable one that was supported by all those involved. The goal that the various authorities had set themselves during the conference was to reach broad conclusions about how environmental policy in the Netherlands should be directed in the future, and the best way to implement it. The conclusions were essentially based on the opinion that a ‘new management philosophy for environmental policy’ would be sought (VROM 1995; Appendix 1). This search characterised environmental planning during the second half of the 1990s.

There are those who argue that a policy based on consensus is preferable to policy that is optimal in the technical sense. Policy must be understood and developed on the basis of a social dialogue. It is also claimed that each environmental problem has its own specific characteristics. This means, among other things, that a local approach is increasingly preferred to a more generic approach. That is why it is considered important to allow sufficient scope at local and regional level for developing area-specific policies. There must also be sufficient scope at that level to set priorities. One solution under consideration is a form of ‘self-regulation within guidelines’. It must be possible to deviate from standards, and there must be scope for public discussion of the consequences of doing so. The reasoning behind this approach is that decisions reached at the level in question are more effective than measures imposed from above. Environmental goals will have to be considered with other forms of area-related qualities, “whereby an acceptable overall solution within the environmental field can lead to the most appropriate solution for the area as a whole” (VROM 1995; 11). The government’s role will therefore have to be more conducive to creating favourable conditions and facilitating than in the past (VROM 1995; Appendix 1). The formulation of these conclusions² brought a certain amount of consensus and calm to the sometimes-turbulent discussion surrounding environmental policy-making (§ 5.5). On the basis of these conclusions, the discussion on the hierarchical and guideline-setting nature of environmental policy was formed into a structured process in order to discover new directions. The resulting proposals have not been without effect (see Chapter 5). A situation-specific and area-oriented overall policy has become an acceptable alternative to generic command-and-control planning. However, it remains to be seen whether such a policy will make a substantial positive contribution that is more beneficial than command-and-control planning.

The above outlines the practice-related problem and describes the national discussion about setting standards in environmental policy, and their implications for other forms of policy relating to the physical environment. The question is whether environmental quality can be defined as a separate area, or whether it should be considered with overlapping issues. From an administrative point of view, it is a question of the degree of emphasis placed on hierarchical or decentralised decision- making. In the first case, problem definition will be based on a generic approach. In the latter case, each environmental/spatial conflict will be considered unique and the problem will be defined for each individual case, thereby allowing for the context in which the problem has arisen. Consequently, the conflict becomes more complex than when the problem is considered out of context.

Here, the question is whether developments and changes in environmental policy can be directed by using the term ‘complexity’ to elucidate the policy issue. It is a question of whether issues should be considered as straightforward or complex to a greater or lesser extent. Our reality is such that it is not possible to define all issues in a straightforward way using general formulations such as generic environmental standards. Neither are strategies for ‘complex decision-making’ appropriate in all cases, with popular concepts such as participation, consensus, self-regulation and communicative action. It is not likely that network-related strategies will completely replace policies that set standards. But what is likely? Will greater scope for market forces be the answer, in accordance with the spirit of the 1990s: the idea that public issues can also be developed and managed according to the principles of the market mechanism? Is a policy geared to the type of issue a feasible alternative? Or is it much more a question of placing or shifting emphasis in a pluriform policy? These are questions that fit in an academic exercise in the underpinning and reasoning of standpoints and visions regarding the question whether governmental management, planning and policy development should be more (or less) centralised, or whether it should be decentralised.

The empirical objects of this book are defined in section 1.3. These objects are partly administrative in nature, and can partly be described in physical-spatial and societal terms. It is not only a question of the environmental/spatial conflict itself. Environmental/spatial conflicts will also be considered as a subject of decision-making, the question being whether their complexity can serve as a criterion for decision-making. Decision-making, in particular that relating to the environment, is an administrative subject of study here. Section 1.4 describes how the empirical issues studied can be looked at using theoretical reflection, and how that reflection can be of empirical value. The question here is also whether complexity can be a consideration in decision-making. This question is discussed on section 1.5 as the basis for this bo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• PART A Environmental/spatial Conflicts in a Changing Context
• PART B Complexity and Pluriformity
• PART C Interaction and Changing Goals in Area-specific Environmental Policy
• References
• Abbreviations
• Legislation
• Index