Spatial planning

The Netherlands is the most densely populated country in Europe, so it has to use space with care. Housing and recreation, commerce and manufacturing, traffic and transport, agriculture and nature conservation - all these activities have to be located carefully and in mutual harmony.
The Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) is responsible for making this happen.
Planners used to draw up land-use structure plans for specific periods. Now they apply more flexible guidelines, taking account of changing developments.
The Spatial Planning Act provides the legal framework for planning in the Netherlands.
The municipalities are responsible at local level, drawing up development plans to show how land may be used and what may be built on and under it.
The provinces draw up regional plans and approve municipal development plans. Central government gives guidelines based on its national spatial planning policy.
HOUSING: The most common type of dwelling in the Netherlands is the terraced house: a family home, two or three storeys high, with a front and back garden, built in a terrace with two, three, or more identical homes.
In the cities, where space is at a premium, many people live in low-or high-rise blocks of flats.
Until the 20th century, central government rarely concerned itself with housing. Local authorities alone laid down regulations for building alignment, fire safety, and sanitation. Some building regulations even date back to the Middle Ages.
All this changed radically with the 1901 Housing Act, which gave central government new powers to plan housing and urban development.
At the end of the Second World War, there was a huge housing shortage, whose impact lasted well into the 1980s.
In the 40 years after the Second World War, an average of 100,000 new homes were built every year, the vast majority with state subsidies.
This enabled rents to stay low and large-scale building programmes to continue. For many years, the low-rent policy was linked to a policy of pay restraint, with relatively low wages strengthening the country's competitive position in export markets.
Quantity rather than quality was the principle underpinning housing policy in the years immediately after the Second World War.
In the 1970s, however, attitudes changed, and the emphasis shifted to quality.
THE GOVERNMENT LAUNCHED A NEW POLICY INSTRUMENT: housing benefit for tenants who would otherwise be spending too high a proportion of their income on rent.
In the second half of the 1980s, the government had to economise drastically in most areas, including housing. By the early 1990s, spending on housing benefit had risen sharply.
So the government started to target people with the lowest incomes. The municipalities have played an important part in implementing this policy.
HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS: 2.4 million rented dwellings - around 40% of all Dutch homes - are administered by housing associations, non-profit bodies whose purpose is to provide good, affordable housing.
Decentralisation in the Netherlands has been accompanied by a loosening of the ties between the state and housing associations, a process eased by the healthy financial position of most of them.
The system of funding social housing with state loans has been abolished. Rent policy, for which central government had been almost wholly responsible, was partially deregulated in 1993.
And central government has delegated much of its supervision of housing association activities to the municipalities.
THE GOVERNMENT'S CORE TASKS: The municipalities and provinces are now mainly responsible for implementing housing policy.
In practice, the housing market varies widely around the country, in terms of both prices and types of dwelling.
In future, central government will concentrate on core tasks, such as ensuring that housing is adequate, affordable, and available where needed. It will target subsidies at people with the lowest incomes and other specific groups such as the elderly and the disabled.
1995 TO 2005: There are now 6.2 million homes in the Netherlands, with an average of 2.5 people living in each. New sites are to be developed between now and 2005 for the construction of a further 650,000 new homes.
Central government has reached agreement with the municipalities and provinces on the number to be built, the necessary infrastructure, and the allocation of business zones nearby.
It has also made money available up to 2005 to clear the sites, clean the soil, and build the infrastructure.
In addition, it is encouraging the use of eco-friendly methods, materials, and structures for building new homes and renovating and maintaining existing ones.