About
46
Publications
8,860
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
401
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Additional affiliations
May 2003 - present
June 1998 - May 2003
Publications
Publications (46)
Since 2000, approximately 250 football fields of land (180 ha) have been converted to urban use in Europe every day. This development far outstrips population growth; urbanisation occurs even in shrinking regions. In Europe, the conversion of land to urban use is the outcome of conscious decisions.
The purpose of this policy brief is to provide cit...
Overview of territorial evidence in the Netherlands from ESPON research projects
In ESPON SUPER, the case studies contribute to the objective of unravelling how different interventions in diverse social, environmental and economic settings have transformed land-use development practices. In particular, the aim is to analyse, understand and learn from the successes and failures of practitioners and decision makers over the last...
This Annex to the Main Report provides background information about drivers of land use change and actual land use changes for the ESPON SUPER project. Specifically, it provides information about how data was collected and methodological information about the analysis. It also presents an overview of the findings in the form of maps, tables and cha...
In ESPON SUPER, the case studies contribute to the objective of unravelling how different interventions in diverse social, environmental and economic settings have transformed land-use development practices. In particular, the aim is to analyse, understand and learn from the successes and failures of practitioners and decision makers over the last...
The COVID-19 crisis has forced us to rethink how and where we should live our lives. Moreover, with the land development system now on hold in most parts of Europe, a unique window of opportunity has opened up to question whether this system is capable of delivering the natural and built environment we want for ourselves and for our children. Do we...
Suggestions abound on interventions to promote sustainable urbanisation and land use, as witnessed by myriad declarations and manifestos on good spatial planning practices. These ranges from the New Urbanism movement in North America to, in Europe, the European Spatial Development Perspective, the Territorial Agenda of the European Union, the Leipz...
In ESPON SUPER, the case studies contribute to the objective of unravelling how different interventions in diverse social, environmental and economic settings have transformed land-use development practices. In particular, the aim is to analyse, understand and learn from the successes and failures of practitioners and decision makers over the last...
This report on the case study of PL-ITI presents a synthesis of all three outputs in order.
This report on the case study of SE-Stockholm presents a synthesis of all three outputs in order. It is structured as follows. This introductory section provides a summary of the main characteristics of the case study (Section 1.1), the scale of analysis (Section 1.2) and geographical scope (Section 1.3). Section 2 contextualizes how urbanization o...
Guides help you do things. You turn to them when you need to find out how to solve a problem. They are a form of knowledge transfer, written by experts in a way that is accessible and helpful to a wide audience.
This guide was written by the researchers engaged in the ESPON 2020 applied research
project on Sustainable Urbanisation and Land-Use Prac...
The Dutch national government likes to present itself as modern, open and having embraced the transition from government to governance (transformation thesis). In 2015, it launched its ‘Urban Agenda’ to harness the creative potential of cities to solve complex problems by means of city deals: voluntary agreements between municipalities, national mi...
This chapter explores learning in City Deals, a Dutch policy programme aimed at accelerating transitions (i.e. long-term system changes), such as sustainable urban development, climate adaptation, and renewable energy. Within City Deals a diverse network of partners (ministries, local governments, companies, and/or social organisations) work togeth...
Following decades of urban decline in many European cities, there is now an abundant literature identifying a process of reurbanisation, which has now also reached many secondary cities, including those in post-industrialised regions. Reurbanisation is an umbrella concept involving several related but distinct processes, though has its roots in spa...
Het PBL is door het (toenmalig) ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu in januari 2015 gevraagd een ex-ante evaluatie op te stellen van de Nationale Omgevingsvisie. Deze Policy Brief is een tussenproduct op weg naar die ex-ante evaluatie, waarin we een reflectie geven op het Kabinetsperspectief. De feitelijke ex-ante evaluatie vindt later plaats,...
National laws, local traditions and practices largely define which spatial planning policies are pursued and how they are carried out. Still, like many other policy areas, an unmistakeable process of Europeanization is underway in planning. On the one hand, informal bottom-up Europeanization is occurring through the increasing interaction between s...
Conscious attempts to affect planning practice by reforming the statutory planning system are a common form of institutional design. Despite this, the effectiveness of institutional design as a strategy has not been sufficiently addressed in the planning literature. The Dutch case has been monitored thoroughly and provides a good opportunity to ass...
With the fundamental rescaling of socio-economic relationships, the mega-city region (MCR) has emerged as an important geographical space for governance. At the same time it is highly fragmented institutionally, making it difficult to overcome collective action problems such as providing regional public transport and protecting open spaces. In prac...
Those who promote spatial planning or spatial policy at the European level have increasingly done so under the banner of ‘territorial cohesion’. Since the inclusion of this term in the draft Constitution as an objective of the European Union, territorial cohesion has drawn the attention of an increasing number of actors and interests. By virtue of...
Countless autonomous, self-reinforcing and countervailing forces impact the future competitiveness of Europe and its spatial structure. Poignant examples include globalization, ageing and climate change, but also policy decisions taken by nation-states or the European Union. Scenarios are an appropriate method by which to explore possible future de...
http://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/PBL-2010-Ex-durante-WRO.pdf
Scenarios, unlike forecasts or prognoses, do not seek to predict future events. Instead, the intent is to understand how the future is produced by examining a number of possible developmental pathways. These pathways are created by adjusting a limited number of variables within a particular cause-effect chain of events. The insights generated by th...
From a strictly legal point of view, the European Union does not have authority to carry out spatial planning. The closest thing resembling a spatial policy is the outdated and unofficial European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). The inclusion of the term 'territorial cohesion' in the Reform Treaty has created new opportunities for proponent...
Op verzoek van de Tweede Kamer heeft het RPB in deze studie verkend hoe belangrijke ruimtelijke vraagstukken die in de Randstad spelen, worden aangepakt in buitenlandse, met de Randstad te vergelijken, stedelijke regio's, en hoe de bestuurlijke organisatie in die gebieden zich tot die aanpak verhoudt. De internationale vergelijking kan op twee mani...
Although the European Union has had no formal power to conduct spatial planning as such, many of its policies have had a clear impact on urban and regional development in the member states. Examples include the encouragement of certain kinds of development in particular regions via the structural funds or the designation of Trans- European Networks...
The European Union is changing significantly. It has recently been enlarged by 10 new Member States, decision-making about the European Constitution is going on, and it has set itself the target of becoming the most competitive economy in the world (Lisbon Strategy). The scenarios explore in an integrated way the territorial impacts of future chang...
This paper presents some preliminary results from the project Spatial Scenarios in Relation to the ESDP and Cohesion Policy. This project is being carried out in the framework of the ESPON programme. Until now the project has concentrated on making thematic scenarios, exploring future changes of selected EU- policies. After describing the scenario-...
In West Europe, one of the most contested kinds of urban development is the out-of-town shopping center. Pointing to the US experience, these are viewed as threats to the vitality of traditional town centers, and are often actively discouraged by planning legislation. This notwithstanding, ever-larger shopping malls were being built in Europe as th...
Aggressive internationalisation activities by global retailers frequently encounter, in addition to responses from indigenous rivals, the regulatory mechanisms of the governments of host or target nations. However, these public regulatory mechanisms are themselves in a state of flux, often as a function of internal conflict between government polic...
One of the most important factors driving urbanisation processes is the location of shops. The Netherlands has taken a particularly hard line against what it calls ‘peripheral’ developments by establishing rules at the national level to curb the growth of out-of-town hypermarkets and shopping malls. With the arrival of the Fifth Report on Spatial P...
Planning in Europe and the United States uses very different points of departure to address similar spatial goals. More specifically, the strategies employed to curb or prevent urban sprawl by the Netherlands and Florida, both considered in their respective contexts to have highly developed planning systems, are very different. In order to compare...
Projects
Projects (3)
The overall objective is to provide robust and policy relevant insights on sustainable versus non-sustainable urbanization and land use patterns, the impact of policy interventions and, more specifically, delivering an integrated analytical framework to assess future developments. In other words: we wish to understand the sustainability of urbanization and land use processes and practices and the degree to which policy can affect it.
Five key policy areas are presented that the proposal should address. These are summarized as follows:
a) What does the current European land use look like and which cities and regions have experienced the most significant changes?
b) What are the costs and benefits of unconstrained land-take versus limiting land-take towards zero net land take by 2050?
c) Which (spatial) strategies, instruments and mechanisms (financial, fiscal and economic) could be used, at national, regional and local level to achieve this?
d) What determines the success of policy interventions?
e) How does territorial cohesion policy and specific sectoral policies influence urban sprawl and landtake? What recommendations could be made to these policy areas?
From this list of objectives, we surmise that the main emphasis is on sustainable urbanization. We prefer the term ‘urbanization’ above ‘land take’ or ‘sprawl’ because it is a neutral way to describe the phenomenon of land conversion. In our conceptualization, urbanization does not merely denote the movement of population to cities or the expansion of
the built-up area, but all physical urban developments. Many varieties of urbanization can be distinguished in Europe, even de-urbanization (conversion of urban land to natural or rural uses). Given the diversity of Europe and the importance of taking a place-based approach, we feel that ‘urbanization’ as a concept is more consistent with and amenable
to European territorial governance and spatial planning, and hence, we feel, to the ESPON programme (cf. ESPON Compass 2018). Because of this we firmly believe that this interpretation serves the primary goal of the ToR of “further developing and improving the ESPON knowledge base”.
Objectives
The answers to these questions should then entail the following activities:
a) Survey and explanation of European land-use dynamics;
b) Analysis of the effects of containment versus unconstrained urbanization;
c) Survey of potential interventions to achieve sustainable urbanization and land use;
d) Analysis of success factors for interventions towards sustainable urbanization;
e) Analysis of the impacts of EU-policies on (sustainable) urbanization.
Tasks
In order to produce these outcomes, the project specifies a number of tasks which provide a detailed explanation of the envisioned project. We have summarized these as follows:
1. Survey: gathering/ updating data, indicators and evidence;
2. Survey: identifying, describing and analysing potential interventions;
3. Analysis: causal analysis of drivers (including policy) and impacts of urbanization;
4. Analysis: 10 in-depth case studies that provide insight into interventions in context;
5. Advice: evidence-based policy recommendations aimed at different scales and target groups.
Outcomes
The outcomes of the project (indicated as bullets) will be:
I. Survey: Evidence and maps of land-use dynamics, specifically urbanization patterns;
II. Analysis: Evidence on the impacts of (different kinds of2) urbanization;
III. Analysis: Evidence on the impacts of interventions to influence urbanization;
IV. Analysis: Case studies on intervention practices3 in urbanization hotspots;
V. Advice: a handbook to promote sustainable urbanization and land use;
VI. Advice: recommendations for EU policies for promoting sustainable land use.
City deals are new forms of public administration, based on voluntary agreements between ministries, municipalities, private sector and NGOs. There are about 20-30 such projects in the making or being implemented. The first experiences with this will be evaluated in 2017.
