This book provides an introduction to spatial planning in the Netherlands. It explores the academic underpinnings of the discipline and its practical implications, making use of insights on planning practices from the Netherlands. As an academic book with relevance for spatial planning teaching and practice, the relation between planning practice and planning as an academic discipline are discussed. A key analytical concept is introduced to discuss the different dimensions of planning: the planning triangle. This framework helps to bridge the strategic and conceptual elements of planning with its realization. The object, process, and context of planning and its relations are discussed. The core of the academic discipline and profession of spatial planning entails looking (far) into the future, stimulating discussion, formulating a desired future direction through an informal and collective planning process, and then formalizing and placing current action into that future perspective. In that sense, spatial planning can be understood as the strategic organization of hopes and expectations. As a study book it is suitable for students of planning at various universities, but also for students in higher professional education. For those involved in the professional field of spatial planning, this book offers a sound foundation.

‘Planning and Development Law in the Netherlands’ seeks to be an accessible introduction to the extensive field of planning law. The book covers both the ‘planning side’ (the formal system) and the ‘development side’ (including the interrelations between municipalities and developers). It is primarily intended for Dutch and international students. But also researchers and practitioners outside the Netherlands seeking information about Dutch Planning and Development Law may find this a useful introduction to this complex, yet highly relevant field. Fred Hobma and Pieter Jong are lecturers in Planning and ­Development Law.

Dutch planning is widely known and admired for its ambitions and its achievements. This book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive description and analysis in English of its full range of policies and practices. It gives an up-to-date account of the principles - written and unwritten - behind the planning, and in addition shows how the practice sometimes ignores those principles in order to achieve better results. It describes the content of the policies, the measures taken to realise them, and the successes and failures. The book is not uncritical of Dutch land-use planning, but the author values its strengths and believes that planning in other countries could learn from them. These strengths arise in the continuing tension between the high ambitions of the Dutch planning, and the ingenuity and pragmatism exercised in order to realise those ambitions.