Ongoing urbanization may force the urban sprawl to spread across the individual boundaries of neighbouring Dutch cities and villages in the Randstad causing open areas to disappear. The same development can be seen in the Dutch provinces of Limburg and Brabant. These conclusions can be drawn from a study calculating the spatial effects of the National Spatial Strategy policy document from the Dutch government.
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Summary
The effects of the new National Spatial Strategy policy document, recently adopted by the Dutch government, have been evaluated by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The spatial projection of future land use in 2030 included in this evaluation allowed the proposed spatial measures to be implemented in the Environment Explorer.
The spatial projection shows the largest urbanization probabilities to be near existing urban areas such as the Randstad, especially around the major cities of Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, where spatial pressure is high. Developments here are so extensive that it will be hard to allocate them within the policy measures in the long term, while avoiding restrictive areas.
For the national landscapes, urbanization will depend on the implementation of new policy measures. On the one hand, municipalities involved will be allowed to build homes for their local populations and provide land for local and regional businesses. On the other, large-scale urban developments in national landscapes will not be acceptable. The creeping urbanization will have long-term adverse effects on the value of these landscapes.
In most combination areas (areas in which urban development is concentrated) there will be sufficient space for urbanization to allocate all new developments up to 2030 except for the Randstad provinces (Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland and Utrecht) and the province of Limburg. Especially in Noord-Holland and Limburg, the space available in combination areas will be limited in the long term. There will be enough space to allocate for residential and industrial developments but not for water storage, recreational and green areas.
