fig congress 2018 - Towards a new legislative framework for spatial planning – the environment and planning act
Marije Louwsma
The Dutch government aims to simplify and align all legislation in the spatial and environmental planning domain by integrating the existing set of rules and legislation into one Act: the Environment and Planning Act. It will merge 26 laws from the environment, water, nature, spatial planning, and housing domains into a single Act, and reduces the number of regulations and decrees from 240 to 14. The Environment and Planning Act comes with a new digital system to allow equal access to information for all stakeholders. By one click on the map the initiator, citizen and government alike can retrieve relevant information about current planning rules and regulations and can find out if additional investigations are required for certain spatial developments or activities. The digital system combines geo-information and administrative data and is organized by theme: air, soil, noise, water, waste, heritage, nature, external safety, construction, and space. It is contested by some whether the proposed Act and its decree will live up to the expectations. The dualistic nature of the land use plan is criticized as it is meant to regulate existing land uses on the one hand and to direct new developments on the other hand. A point of concern with respect to the land policy instruments relates to the tension between providing legal certainty for land right holders and simultaneously providing flexibility for spatial developments, i.e. no blueprint planning but organic development based on public-private initiatives. The aim of this paper is to reflect on where we stand now and on the way forward with respect to the new Environment and Planning Act, its land policy instruments, and the digital system that has to support the spatial planning processes.
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