Changing the way we think about housing construction in the Netherlands

Housing construction in the Netherlands has limited consideration for the costs that will have to be incurred in the future because it is built on land that is not optimally suited for the constructions. According tot Edwin Buitelaar, professor of Land and Real Estate Development, the question is what we should change about our economic system for developing housing. How can we take soil and water systems more into account in the process?

The Council for the Environment and Infrastructure has depicted that the foundation problem will cause the Netherlands additional costs in the medium and long term, especially in the west. In the current system of housing construction, developers’ eyes are limited to the moment of completion. Management costs and long-term investments are for homeowners, housing associations or investors. The government used the principle in which ‘water and soil are guiding’ for spatial planning. But under pressure from the construction industry, the minister recently indicated that this principle should be changed.

Buitelaar: “The principle of ‘water and soil guiding’ provokes public debate. Spatial planners struggle with that in practice. I think we need to move towards a system for housing construction in which long-term costs are taken into account. Then, as a builder, you might come to a different choice of location or other interventions on the site itself to keep dry feet in the long term and not have pile rot, for example.”

Keeping dry feet is about water safety and flooding at peak times. “The water board has calculated in the Rijnenburg polder in Utrecht what would happen if the water bomb that fell in Limburg a few years ago were to fall there. Then specific spots in that area would be flooded. If you take that into account when planning, you avoid problems.” Ultimately, the issues surrounding a changing climate always involve water safety (flooding), flooding (peak showers), subsidence, heat stress and freshwater scarcity. “I come from the field of area development, but I am now learning from people from the water world how complex our water system is. With land subsidence, sea level rise, floods or, on the contrary, a shortage of water, a different balance arises. Together with fellow scientists and computational consultancies, we are now researching a different way of calculating area development that incorporates long-term costs,” Buitelaar says. “I would not have been able to participate in this if I had not been involved in the course Spatial Planning in a Changing Climate - taught in Dutch. So you see that education for professionals and research reinforce each other.”