Evaluating the impact of national government involvement in local redevelopment projects in the Netherlands

• Published in: Cities 2013-04, Vol.31, p.29-36
• Main Authors: Spaans, Marjolein, Trip, Jan Jacob, van der Wouden, Ries
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Central government; Development projects; Key projects; Local government; National government involvement; Netherlands; Subsidiarity; The Netherlands; Urban development; Urban redevelopment
• ISSN: 0264-2751; 1873-6084
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2012.10.014

► Justification of national government involvement in local urban redevelopment. ► Contribution to national wealth as criterion for active involvement. ► Evaluation of key projects and reference projects in the Netherlands. ► No clear evidence of surplus value of national government involvement in key projects. Urban redevelopment projects are usually the responsibility of local government, but there can be local projects which generate large national wealth effects and for that reason have a direct national government involvement. While such involvement can be justified theoretically, evidence from the Netherlands suggests that in practice the issue is far from unambiguous. This paper therefore considers (1) the grounds on which higher tiers of government, particularly national government, become actively involved in local urban projects and (2) to what extent the results of local projects indeed justify the involvement of national government. To this end, we evaluate the involvement of the Dutch government in local projects based on an analysis of a series of large-scale projects (known as key projects).