**4. Third and Forth Report on Spatial Planning**

The 'growth municipalities' entered officially the planning stage at the time of the Third Report on Spatial Planning (V&RO, 1976, 1977). A steep increase of the number of inhabitants in a part of these municipalities can already be traced back a decade earlier. Some of the 'grow municipalities' turned into independent towns; some of them were merely the extension of the larger agglomerations. The Third Report listed eleven official 'growth municipalities'. Each of the four larger cities in the Randstad was outfitted with at least one 'growth municipality' that was firmly situated in the area that was still considered to be an integral part of the Green Heart: Hoofddorp in the Amsterdam region, Zoetermeer in The Hague region, Capelle aan den IJssel in the Rotterdam region and Nieuwegein in the Utrecht region. Most of the roads that were foreseen in the 1966 structure plan for the national motorway network never made it off the drawing board. Motorway construction still made a significant impact on the Green Heart with the construction of the A2 (Amsterdam - Utrecht - Den Bosch), the A4 (Amsterdam - The Hague), the A20 (Rotterdam - Gouda), the A67 (Hilversum - Utrecht - Breda), the N11 (Leiden - Bodegraven) and to a lesser extend also the A1 (Amsterdam - Hilversum).

The Forth Report on Spatial Planning (VROM, 1988) and its extended version called VINEX (VROM, 1993) abandoned the 'growth municipality' strategy and introduced the so-called VINEX-extensions. The VINEX-extensions, with its new residential areas at Noordrand (Rotterdam), Ypenburg (The Hague) and Oosterheem (Zoetermeer) and Leidsche Rijn (Utrecht) pushed the envelop of the Green Heart further inwards. No new motorways were planned but most of the existing roads would be widened. At the turn of the century, after

Leidsche Rijn: Balancing the Compact City with the Randstad Motorway Network 29

Leidsche Rijn, conceived two decades later, signals in many respects a clear break from previous spatial planning concepts. Leidsche Rijn is based on the compact city concept. That city model assumes that keeping distances within urban regions short will result in environmental benefits through reduced travel(time) and more effective land use. Keeping new developments close to Utrecht meant that city had to develop westwards into the area that was an integral part of the Green Heart since that concept was coined. The Fourth Report on Spatial Planning adjusted the planning border of that Green Heart to allow the development of Hollands largest greenfield development. The ambition to minimise the distance between Leidsche Rijn meant furthermore that the urban development had to make effective use of the space along the A2 motorway, space that would normally be leftover due to the environmental footprint caused by noise, air pollution and risks. Because the capacity of the A2 was insufficient, the road had to be widened from 2x3 lanes to 2x5 lanes. Both projects, extending Utrecht and extending the A2 corridor had to take place in one

In the early 1990s, a young urban planning firm received the commission to develop a master plan for Utrecht's new VINEX development Leidsche Rijn. The office was by then know as Max 1, currently as Maxwan. Maxwan proposed a different direction than most urban planners tended to pursue. Usually planners pay close attention to the environmental constraints of a site and use them as a starting point, trying to keep housing and other soft functions (such as education and care facilities) at a secure distance from major arteries or other producers of noise, air pollution and safety issues. This explains why in the Dutch practice green spaces are often used to fill up the gap between infrastructure and residential areas. But as a result, those green spaces often end up fragmented, noisy, polluted and not

well suited to the recreational purposes that green spaces are mostly associated with.

Fig. 5. Leidsche Rijn with (left) and without (right) a tunnel solution (Maxwan, 2009)

integrated development project.

**6. Masterplan Leidsche Rijn** 

four decades of spatial planning, the overall concept of how the urban areas, open spaces and infrastructure of the Randstad related to each other had fundamentally changed.

Fig. 4. The shrinking boundaries of the Green Heart (Pieterse et al, 2005)
