The landscape policies pursued have curbed urban development in the countryside. But little attention has been given to improving the quality of the landscape.

Restrictive landscape policy has worked, the drive for quality has not

In 1990 central government decided to separate general landscape policy from regional and area-based policies. New building in the countryside has been limited primarily through implementation of the restrictive policy, which has been a major contribution to maintaining open landscapes.

 
Less has been built within the area of the Randstad subject to a restrictive policy than outside it (source: Statistics Netherlands data and LGN5).

Changing purpose of area-based policies

Over the years, the focus and substance of area-based policies has changed. Both the areas themselves as well as the purposes of the policy have changed. The first area-based policies were for the Valuable Cultural Landscapes. These were followed by the ‘Belvedere areas’ with valuable cultural and historic features. In the National Spatial Strategy, area-based policy focuses on 20 National Landscapes. These incorporate the core values of the Valuable Cultural Landscapes, while also adopting the ‘conservation through development’ philosophy from the Belvedere policy document.

Landscape quality

Generic landscape policy and area-based policy are not geared to creating landscape quality. They permit a wide range of possible developments in the National Landscapes, as long as the core landscape qualities are conserved or strengthened. The provincial councils are still in the process of identifying and describing these core qualities in more concrete terms.
Outside the National Landscapes, policies in the National Spatial Strategy are limited to achieving and maintaining a ‘basic quality level’. The detailed description of this standard, a task for the provincial and municipal councils, still has to be drawn up.

The National Landscapes overlap to a large extent with the various earlier categories of area-based landscape policy.

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