2014 AESOP Casabella Twisted Thorbecke.Pdf
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TWISTED THORBECKE (OR HOW OLD RIVALRIES BETWEEN THE ‘BIG CITIES’, THE PROVINCES AND THE STATE WITHIN THE RANDSTAD CAN COMPROMISE POLICY INNOVATION, SEEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A REGIONAL, RAILWAY-BASED TRANSPORT SCHEME) Casabella, Nadia (ULB Faculty of Architecture, [email protected]) Keywords: scale, spatial policy, Stedenbaan The nested model that allowed Thorbecke (1848) to lay the ground for the administrative organization in municipal, provincial and national scales does no longer seem relevant to contemporary spatial processes. Scale seems rather to proliferate and get entangled in different temporalities as well as spatialities (Jessop, 1998). To devise jointly those different scales seems far from evident both conceptually and as regards political-administrative arbitration. Further, as the means to gear spatial transformation are not fully seized by those who would benefit from them, aberrant effects are likely to appear. This aspect is particularly pertinent in transit infrastructure projects, as the scale at which networks are owned and/or managed rarely corresponds to the territorial boundaries within which their structuring effects are felt. Here, we will review the repeated efforts of South-Holland Province to emancipate from the national- local dominance in the Randstad context, starting with its first regional spatial vision (1994), strongly axed on regional transit, but that failed because of the lack of explicit support from the big cities. It was not until the creation of the Southwing Administrative Platform in 2003 that the Province enjoyed an entente cordiale. This support bore its fruits in the form of the Stedenbaan (the City Line), an ambitious transit oriented development scheme that has been recently compromised by the big cities of The Hague and Rotterdam. References Banister D. 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Dutch Evidence on the Persistent Problem of Horizontal Coordination”, European Planning Studies, 7, pp. 563-585 Priemus, H., Zonneveld, W. (2003) “What are corridors and what are the issues? Introduction to special issue: the governance of corridors” in Journal of Transport Geography, 11, pp. 167-177 PZH, Provincie Zuid-Holland, Gedeputeerde Staten (1994a) “Discussienota Ruimtelijke Toekomst. Voorsorteren op de periode na 2005”, (The Hague: PZH) PZH, Provincie Zuid-Holland, Dienst Ruimte en Groen (1994b) “Meer armslag voor de Zuidvleugel. Ruimtelijke Toekomstverkenning” (The Hague: PZH) PZH, Provincie Zuid-Holland, Knopenwerkgroep (2002) “Knopen legen, van visie naar beleid”, (The Hague: PZH) Reigner, H. Hernandez, F. 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The emergence and development of new planning concepts in Dutch national spatial policy [PhD dissertation published by the author] Zonneveld, W. (2005) De conceptualisering van ruimte in de Nederlands planning (The Hague:Nai – RPB) 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to review the policy evolution of Stedenbaan, an important rail infrastructure project extending between Leiden and Dordrecht, framed by the tension between transport and land- use disciplines. This scheme portrays all the characteristics of a full-fledged transit oriented development (TOD), joining in one planning solution: - a high-quality transit system, fast, frequently riding and accessible on ground level; - a comprehensive approach to mobility, trying to integrate door-to-door trips (before and after reaching the railway station); - and diverse and high-density urban developments around railway stations. One of the things the Stedenbaan project shows is that the scale question underpins substantial innovations in the field of spatial policy. Our particular approach to scale attempts to grasp which role it has played in recent transformations of socio-spatial organization in which urban regions and not just cities are considered to be the new sites of spatial planning regulation. Certainly, as Jessop et al. (2008) emphasize in a by now polemic paper, we also agree that scale ought not to be the dominant issue when discussing space and its (social) production but rather be taken as a relational element in a complex mix that includes territories, places and networks. However, when analyzing transit infrastructure projects, this aspect seems particularly pertinent as the scale at which networks are owned and/or managed rarely corresponds to the territorial boundaries within which their structuring effects are felt (Reigner & Fernandez, 2007). As we try to reveal in the following paragraphs, the Stedenbaan project, conceptually framed by the Dutch concept of ‘corridors’, and subsequently of ‘urban networks’ (van Duinen, 2004), can be considered a good example of the way planning contributes actively to the construction of scale. Stedenbaan, the City Line, promises a new type of city rather than a new physical configuration. Because it takes the scale-jump of urbanization as its starting point, it succeeds to incorporate other issues, like functional cohesion and regional accessibility, along those more familiar to the Dutch planning doctrine (Faludi & van der Valk, 1994), concerned with urban containment and preservation of open areas. The tensions between transport, economic and spatial functions that appear as the result of this scale-jump are not resolved by pulling in policy sectors defined along the lines of separate disciplines (Priemus, 1999; Priemus & Zonneveld, 2003), but rather by attempting to interpenetrate scales while simultaneously looking at their possible interdependencies. The paper is structured as follows: first we outline some of the later contributions to the scale theorization advanced for the most part by scholars working in the field of human or political geography. And second, we will review the repeated efforts of South-Holland Province to emancipate from the national-local dominance in the Randstad context, starting with its