A rationalized delta
pp. 311-326
in: Juval Portugali, Han Meyer, Egbert Stolk, Ekim Tan (eds), Complexity theories of cities have come of age, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
During the twentieth century spatial planning in the Netherlands obtained the status of being a worldwide benchmark. Two phenomena became especially famous: the Randstad Holland, as an example of a poly-nuclear metropolis, and the Delta works, as a masterpiece of hydraulic engineering. Both physical structures are strongly related to each other: the Delta Works (together with the Afsluitdijk and IJsselmeerpolders) contributed strongly to a rational organization of urbanization and industrialization of the western part of the Netherlands. Besides, the strong emphasis on major engineering works at the national scale stimulated a culture of state-organized top-down planning. Both concepts, Randstad and Delta Works, were strongly related to the concept of the Netherlands as a nation-state and to the rise of the Welfare State.From the start of the twenty-first century, the concept of the Welfare State and the concepts of Randstad and the Delta Works as expressions of a rationalized engineered urban landscape find themselves in a process of erosion. Changing economic conditions, changing ideas on nature and ecology, climate change and a changing planning-culture resulted in fundamental reconsiderations of these concepts. However, a total farewell to central planning and engineering will be impossible in this country. Many centuries of engineering have resulted in a situation where the survival of the country has become dependent on a continuation of a certain minimum amount of central planning and engineering. The mission for spatial planning, urban design and hydraulic engineering in the Netherlands is to find a new balance between decision-making at the large (national) scale and processes of self-organization at the regional and local scale.In particular, the flanks of the Randstad-territory are examples of a process of reconsideration and redefinition of goals and content of spatial planning, hydraulic engineering and urban design in the Netherlands: at one side the New Town Almere east of Amsterdam, and at the other side the South-west delta, south of Rotterdam. Both cases can be considered as important laboratories, where attempts to define new balances between urbanization and natural landscapes, and between top-down and bottom-up developments, are tested.