The Urban West and the Rural Rest: Framing in Dutch Regional Planing in the 1950s

This paper draws on the case of Dutch regional planning in the 1950s to investigate how ‘urban space’ and ‘rural space’ have traditionally been perceived as opposing concepts. During this decade, politicians, planners and policy-makers constructed an image of an overdeveloped, urban, industrial centre on the one hand, and an underdeveloped, rural, agricultural periphery on the other. Rooted in a debate about the ‘harmonious’ development of the Netherlands, this image made a substantial contribution to the schematic understanding of urban and rural space. Examining this frame as an historical construct helps to reveal the anachronistic character of many of the urban-rural differentiations that are made today.