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A relative lack of space

The western part of the Netherlands, used to be a collection of mid-sized cities, each with its own history and distinct identity, dialect and architecture. Travelling through this part of the country underscored each town as a separate entity, clearly visible in a flat agricultural landscape, made out of canals, black-and-white cows, farms and windmills.
Over the past three or four decades these traditionally compact and dense Dutch cities have transformed into larger agglomerations and finally into vast urban regions, swallowing smaller towns and villages in the process.
Living in the nineties now, even these larger parts are about to fuse together in a sea of look-alike suburbs where `place' as unique and identifiable space is no longer existent. Daily commuters in this new so-called Green Heart Metropolis gaze out at a dispersed urban landscape filled with mushrooming peripheral building sites staged as the backdrop of growing traffic jams.
It should be no wonder that a feeling is growing among citizens, policy makers and planners that open space has become a scarce commodity.

Although it is true that the urban areas have shown dramatic growth over the past three or four decades, this picture is somewhat distorted. In contrast to previous times, a growing population is no longer the main cause for this rapid urban sprawl. Social- economic developments are much more to `blame', causing the existing population to consume more space for all its urban functions then ever before.
For example, in 1960 an average Dutch dwelling was the home of 4.0 persons. By 1995 this figure had dropped to 2.5 persons. In the pre-war areas of the major cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague the size of the average home is about 60 m2 net floor area. In more recent residential areas this size has increased to somewhere between 80 and 120 m2 net floor area (depending on the category: social or more upscale housing). At the same time the average housing density of these quarters fell from gross 70 - 80 units per hectare (pre-war) to gross 30 - 40 units per hectare (post-war). Developments in the field of employment and services are more complex but are showing a similar trend.

What is called a `lack of space' is merely inflicted by a transition of open space into the private realm (bigger house, garden, car park and workplace). Where this expanding private space collides with necessary collective demands like large scale infrastructure, it is felt as an intrusion into personal daily life. In this way, the `lack of space' refers mainly to a remarkable spatial awareness among Dutch people. By measuring the amount of unbuilt square kilometres in the Randstad this `lack of space' can not be established or proved.
But at the same time `the lack of space' functions as a self-fulfilling prophesy. In an attempt to protect to spatial integrity of the original landscape surrounding the sprawling cities, `Green Belt -like' areas were defined to contain further growth. The so-called Green Heart is the largest and best known of these buffer-zones, and has formed the conceptual basis of the urban planning of the Randstad since the sixties. Although such a Green Heart strategy may be plausible and internally consistent, its necessary restrictions on the use of available land is resulting in an increased competition among urban projects for the same artificial scarce amount of space around the core urban areas in the Randstad.
The complexity and duration of urban and infrastructure projects are increasing, specially where large scale projects are concerned. Competing parties in this process, able to take matters into their own hands, vote increasingly with their wheels. By deciding to move their homes and businesses out of the `congested' areas, the pace of suburbanisation is accelerating once again.