From suburbia to post-suburbia in the Netherlands: Potentials and threats for sustainable regional development

摘要

Deconcentration of both people and employment has been the major trend in most metropolitan areas in Northwest Europe since the 1960s. With regard to policy goals of sustainable regional development, deconcentration has so far mainly been seen as a counterproductive tendency. Compact city development, leading to new concentrations of employment and housing areas in or close to the existing built-up areas, was often preferred because it was said to contribute more to sustainable regional development. Initially, the deconcentration process mainly resulted in monofunctional housing, employment and consumption areas in low densities, which generated increasing car traffic and huge losses of open space. However, in recent years we can increasingly witness a tendency towards new multifunctional concentrations in the area around the cities formerly known as 'suburbia'. The central question of this paper is how this shift from 'suburbia' to 'post-suburbia' might contribute to a more sustainable regional development of metropolitan areas. Employment deconcentration might contribute to a more sustainable regional development by 'bringing jobs to the people', especially when it leads to new concentrations close to, or even in, suburban housing areas. In addition, combinations of production and consumption could produce areas that are used more intensively than the traditional monofunctional industry or office areas. The possibilities to produce such mixed-use areas have improved considerably since most present-day employment concentrations produce much less noise and pollution than the industrial complexes of the past. However, a really constructive contribution to sustainable regional development is only reached when the new job concentrations meet various other sustainability criteria like promoting the use of public transport, applying forms of intensive and multiple land use, or decreasing transport distances to suppliers and customers.