- Planning and politics   116 kb by    van Dijk, Ria | rvdijk@dds.nl    Short Outline Politics and area planning are closely related. Because politics dictates the economical structure of a country and area planning is a means to realise (political) ideals. It is interesting to see the differences in area planning and urban fabric between three different countries with distinguished different political structures: England (kapitalism), the former Sovjet Union (communism) and The Netherlands (socialism-kapitalism). Abstract Planning and Politics -The influence of politics on area planning- Politics and area planning are closely related. Because politics dictates the economical structure of a country and area planning is a means to realise (political) ideals. It is interesting to see the differences in area planning and urban fabric between three different countries with distinguished different political structures: England (kapitalism), the former Sovjet Union (communism) and The Netherlands (socialism-kapitalism). Because of it’s market economy, England has a serious a lack of public investments and hasn’t been able to build any major urban projects. And that is not something recent, it goes back ages. Even Sir Christopher Wren saw his reconstructionplan for London going down the drain because of the lack of public investments. Only by incidents money and space becomes available for major urban projects (e.g. the IRA-bom in Manchester and the Millenniumsite in London). Therefore local governments have to convince privat investers of the necessity of a plan rather than to impose it on them. On the other hand we have the former Sovjet Union, where the government had so much power that they made all the plans and executed them themselves. Only by basing everything single on economical motives and an immense bureaucracy this did not always work out. The Netherlands seems to be a compromise in both political and planning. The government dictates only the rules of the game and lets others execute them. Econonics mainly play a leading rol with the realizability of plans. Planning is Poltics. With globalization and changing political structures there can be some unexpected opertunities and problems. For example, one of the threats for the former Sovjet Union could be the kapitalistic ideal in Western Europe: a car for every man. None of the urban area’s can handle that amound of mobility and parked cars. What make sit interesting for other participants: In order to understand how urban area's are going to change by globalization and political changes it is nessecary to understand the current situation and how it has become this way. Keywords planning politics economy Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2003: Planning in a more globalized World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper