Rationalities are rooted in a context. To understand the difference between planning and land development on an operational and strategic level and the different rationalities behind them, it is important to understand the
theoret-ical and practtheoret-ical context in which these differences have been discussed and elaborated in the Netherlands. Dutch theories on sector and facet planning and on planning and implementation are used to illustrate how different ra-tionalities, using different criteria, could develop here.
In the Netherlands, facet planning is used to coordinate land use issues between policy sectors. This section first discusses Dutch ideas on the dis-tinction between sector and facet in order to illustrate the difference between spatial planning and land development. After that, the distinction between (1) allocation of land uses, (2) construction, (3) maintenance, and (4) availability (De Haan et al., 1986, p. 272) is used to explain differences between operation-al spatioperation-al planning and operationoperation-al land development. After that, these dis-tinctions are used to discuss central norms within strategic spatial planning, operational spatial planning, and operational land development.
As in other countries, the Dutch administration recognizes different sec-tors such as agriculture, transport and housing. The ministries and their de-partments are organized on the basis of this division into sectors. These sec-tor departments implement most of the strategic spatial plans. Healey (1999) stated that many sectoral policy communities, with their focus on particular functions or topics such as economic development, housing and agriculture, have developed as isolated bastions. Topics such as spatial planning require that these sectors be coordinated. This type of coordination has been called facet planning (Dutch Lower Chamber, 1970-1971; De Haan & Fernhout, 1981;
De Haan et al., 1986). As Priemus (1996) explained, physical planning is “facet policy,” which seeks to spatially integrate a number of policy sectors, among them Transport & Public Works, Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisher-ies, Economic Affairs, and Housing and the Environment. Other types of facet planning, such as economic planning and social planning, have been present-ed in the literature, though in practice they have not been elaboratpresent-ed as thor-oughly (De Haan & Fernhout, 1981; De Haan et al., 1986).
The concept of facet planning can illustrate strategic spatial planning’s at-titude towards government expenditure. Priemus (1996, p. 152) explained that in the strict sense, strategic spatial planning can be regarded as coordination requiring little or no expenditure, since the largest expenditure relevant to spatial planning takes place in the sectors that implement the policy. This has been considered an advantage for spatial planning. Because the cost of im-plementing strategic spatial planning goals is very high, the planning depart-ment would never have enough money. Since the planning departdepart-ment does not have the money to implement the planning goals, it is clear that other departments are expected to implement the policy (Hajer & Zonneveld, 2000).
Since spatial planning has been considered a separate type of facet plan-ning from economic planplan-ning, spatial planplan-ning should be based on spatial-ly relevant arguments, rather than economic or environmental ones. This is reflected in Article 10 of the Dutch Spatial Planning Act, which states that a
bestemmingsplan may only contain stipulations needed for a good spatial or-der. Consequentially, stipulations in a bestemmingplan may only be based on spatially relevant (ruimtelijk relevante) arguments. For example, a municipality is not allowed to sell its planning power to the highest bidder or to demand disproportional contributions from developers in exchange for a new bestem-mingsplan.
In practice, a terminology has developed to explain the spatial relevance of what appear at first sight to be economic arguments. For example, a mu-nicipality is permitted to defend its choice not to change the bestemmingsplan to allow construction if a developer does not contribute to public facilities fi-nancially, by arguing that implementing the plan is not financially possible. In this case, the financial impossibility of implementing the plan is considered to be a spatially relevant argument.
To understand the different type of norms used within land development, this dissertation uses De Haan et al.’s (1986, p. 272) distinction between (1) al-location of land uses, (2) construction, (3) maintenance, and (4) availability ([1]
bestemming, [2] inrichting, [3] beheer, [4] beschikking). Although many definitions have been given about planning and its relation to implementation (for Dutch examples see De Haan & Fernhout, 1981; Dutch Lower Chamber, 1970-1971;
Kreukels, 1980), De Haan et al.’s (1986) distinction between strategic planning and implementation is relevant because it can help to explain the different norms in spatial planning and land development. “Allocation of land uses” re-fers to the different plans described in the Spatial Planning Act that deter-mine the activities which may take place on the land (De Haan et al., 1986, p. 272). “Construction” and “maintenance” refer to physical measures such as contract work. “Availability” refers to how the property rights to the land can be made available for the activities that are planned on the land, for exam-ple by means of purchase by the government or land reallocation (De Haan et al., 1986, p. 274). In the Dutch administrative system, “allocation of land uses”
is taken care of separately by spatial planning departments (ruimtelijke orden-ing). “Construction, maintenance and availability” are often referred to as land development, and are taken care of by sector departments or the municipal estates departments.
This enables different departments to use different norms. Those depart-ments concerned with construction, maintenance and availability can imple-ment these plans based on the idea that impleimple-mentation should be effective and efficient in line with the Dutch system for Policy Budgets and Policy Ac-countability (Van Beleidsbegroting Tot Beleidsverantwoording, VBTB) (e.g., IOFEZ, 2004). On the other hand, since one of the norms of spatial planning is that spatial planning decisions should not be made on the basis of a government’s interest as a private party buying and selling land and making contracts to implement planning, spatial planning departments can plan on the basis of spatially relevant (ruimtelijk relevante) arguments, as discussed earlier.
Regard-ing plannRegard-ing as policy preparation can help us understand why spatial plan-ning is led by norms such as a “good spatial order” and legitimate plan-mak-ing instead of efficient and effective implementation.