Towards Sustainable Urban Renewal in the Netherlands

Cities and the neighbourhoods within are dynamic and change continuously. Vital neighbourhoods can cope with changing circumstances like outdated use, changing household compositions, consumer preferences and fashions, political turnovers, global trends and economic cycles. Sustainable areas are vital and flexible to changes. Sustainable urban renewal results in sustainable areas. However, what is sustainable urban renewal, and why is quite a lot of renewal policy, as history shows, not very sustainable? European urban renewal policy can be divided into three separate periods, in which different ideas prevailed. This article shows these three periods on four points of view, the contents, the process, the area and a time-focus, and elaborates these on one particular country, the Netherlands.