'Mona Keijzer's Nota Ruimte is daydreaming reduced to normal proportions at some points.' Friso de Zeeuw, chairman of advisory committee STOER, appreciates the zeal with which the memorandum was made, but wants more emphasis on implementation.
'How then!" asks De Zeeuw. 'How are we going to do this? How are we going to organize this and who is going to pay for what?' The draft Spatial Memorandum, presented last week by Mona Keijzer, sets out the government's vision for spatial policy until 2050. 1.65 million homes must be added. Indoors and in expansion locations, but also in Groningen/Assen, South Limburg and Twente.
Friso de Zeeuw
Consolidation of policy issues
According to De Zeeuw, the Note is really going to move us forward a bit. This is due to the fact that on several points there is more concreteness about how the central government and politicians view the development of our country. 'It's mostly a consolidation of policies that were already there. But now the building locations are known and they are in context on the map. It is also positive that there is more attention to economy, spatial planning, water and soil. In that, this paper is better than Hugo de Jonge's draft. That was completely worthless.
Note full of incongruities
But there is no implementation agenda and no clarity on finances. "That seriously undermines the significance of the paper," De Zeeuw believes. He gives some telling examples. For example, the memorandum designates South Limburg as a growth region. 'But,' he says, 'in South Limburg, attempts have been made for decades to connect to Aachen and Liège, but they hardly succeed. It is now pointed out that Maastricht is a university city, but its image is minimal. Why should it succeed now, without an implementation plan? That tends to airy-fairy.'
He also points to the North Holland North region. 'Alkmaar has just been designated as a major construction area. But they now want to lock that up. The memorandum states that people can only build there for their own needs. That is incomprehensible! Where it grows it must stop, where it stagnates it must grow. The pot for the Lelyline has just been plundered, but for the growth region of Groningen it is cheerfully drawn on the map. It feels strange. It's full of incongruities like that.'
Less policy and more practice
'That's a Dutch disease,' De Zeeuw believes, 'organizing a lot of policy and neglecting implementation. And if we had a reputation for policy continuity, it wouldn't be so bad. But we don't have that.' That is why he would have much preferred a less far-sighted approach, to 2040 for example, but with more realism and attention to implementation, because that is where the pain lies, according to De Zeeuw.
'If people want to take control, I also expect it to be clear how that control will be effected. Because you come across all sorts of things in the implementation. Administrators who start to be obstructive, ongoing grid congestion, the Water Framework Directive, financial tightness, an economic crisis, you name it. Less policy and more practice, you would wish this paper.'
Fortunately for De Zeeuw, it is only a draft, and it has yet to be debated by the House of Representatives. So anything can still change.
