Abstract
Over the last fifty years the world has been rapidly evolving, in terms of population growth, economy, communication and IT, into a society where knowledge and creativity are crucial characteristics for people and communities to trigger even more progress. Progress in the sense of less poverty, longer lives, better food and a better environment, for more and more people who no longer live under the daily threat of war and total chaos. That is a positive evolution, but we could do better. There are still too many people living below the absolute poverty line and there are still major food shortages. For yet more people, food quality is extremely poor. The prospect of a world without hunger and with good food is entirely possible but has not yet been achieved20. The revolution can be defned by two terms: globalisation, and the network society. The world as one increasingly connected system, in which billions of people can communicate directly with each other via mobile phones and the internet, the two most signifcant accomplishments of the IT revolution, which since the 1970s characterise the network society.
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Notes
- 1.
See Rabbinge R. (2000). World food production, food security and sustainable land use. In: El Obeid A.E., S.R. Johnson, J.H. H. and L.C. Smith (eds.) Food security: new solutions for the twenty-first century. Symposium honoring the tenth anniversary of the world food prize. Wiley & Sons, New York, USA, pp. 218–235; and Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (1994). Duurzame risico’s: Een blijvend gegeven:, Report 44, Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, The Hague, the Netherlands.
See also Rabbinge R.R. and P.S. Bindraban (2005). Poverty, agriculture and biodiversity. In: Riggs J.A. (ed.) Conserving biodiversity. The Aspen Institute, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 65–77.
- 2.
Castells M. (1996). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 2: the power of identity. Blackwell, Oxford, UK; Castells M. (2000a). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 3: end of millennium. Blackwell, Oxford, UK; Castells M. (2000b). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 1: the rise of the network society. Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
- 3.
Sloterdijk P. (2006). Het kristalpaleis. Een filosofe van de globalisering. Uitgeverij Boom/SUN, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
- 4.
Wallerstein I. (1980). The modern world system ii. Mercantilism and the consolidation of the european world economy 1600–1750. Academic Press, New York, NY, USA, writes thus about the Netherlands in the Golden Age: ‘if it is to be asserted (…) that the Netherlands was the first country to achieve self-sustained growth, it is primarily because no other country showed such a coherent, cohesive and integrated agro-industrial production complex’.
See also Bieleman J.J. (1992). Geschiedenis van de landbouw in Nederland, 1500–1950. Veranderingen en verscheidenheid. Boom, Meppel, the Netherlands: 26. ‘In the course of the ‘ long 16th century’ an interregional agricultural economy took shape. The Flemish and later the Dutch cities functioned as a focus within this economy. The infuence extended right into the North West European hinterland, encompassing even Denmark and the Baltic states.’
Taylor P.J. (2004) World city network: a global urban analysis. Routledge, London, UK: 8, places the first global trading system in the 12–13th century.
- 5.
Sloterdijk P. (2006). Het kristalpaleis. Een filosofie van de globalisering. Uitgeverij Boom/SUN, Amsterdam, the Netherlands: 249. ‘Both the liberals and the Marxists of the nineteenth century also made serious attempts to interpret the phenomenon of the industrial society: but in neither system was the phenomenon of fossil fuel even mentioned, let alone considered. Because the ruling ideologies of the nineteenth and early twentieth century stubbornly based all their explanations of wealth on the doctrine-loaded concept of the value of labour, they remained chronically incapable of understanding that the industrially acquired and used coal is not a ‘raw material’ like any other, but the first big labour-saving agent. Tanks to this universal “natural labourer” (…) the principle of surplus took up residence in the hot-house of civilisation.’
- 6.
Castells M. (2000). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 1: the rise of the network society. Blackwell, Oxford, UK: 508. ‘a new stage in which culture refers to culture, having superseded nature to the point that nature is artifcially revived (“preserved”) as a cultural form. (…) Because of the convergence of historical evolution and technological change we have entered a purely cultural pattern of social interaction and social organization. This is why information is the key ingredient of our social organization and why flows of messages and images between networks constitute the basic thread of our social structure.’
- 7.
Castells M. (2000). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 1: the rise of the network society. Blackwell, Oxford, UK: 508–509. ‘This is not to say that history has ended in a happy reconciliation of humankind with itself. It is in fact quite the opposite: history is just beginning, if by history we understand the moment when, after millenniums of prehistoric battle with nature, first to survive, then to conquer it, our species has reached the level of knowledge and social organization that will allow us to live in a predominantly social world.’
- 8.
Sloterdijk P. (2006). Het kristalpaleis. Een filosofie van de globalisering. Uitgeverij Boom/SUN, Amsterdam, the Netherlands: 191.
- 9.
Ibid.: 210.
- 10.
Ibid.: 211.
- 11.
Ibid.: 231.
- 12.
See for example, Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (1992). Ground for choices; four perspectives for the rural areas in the european community. Wetenschappelijke raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, The Hague, the Netherlands.
- 13.
Harvey D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Blackwell, Oxford, UK: 204.
- 14.
Castells M. (2000). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 1: the rise of the network society. Blackwell, Oxford, UK: 453.
- 15.
Ibid.: 497. ‘The space of flows (…) dissolves time by disordering the sequence of events and making them simultaneous, thus installing society in eternal ephemerality. The multiple space of places, scattered, fragmented and disconnected, displays diverse temporalities from the most primitive domination of natural rhythms to the strictest tyranny of clock time.’
- 16.
Sloterdijk P. (2006). Het kristalpaleis. Een filosofie van de globalisering. Uitgeverij Boom/SUN, Amsterdam, the Netherlands: 276–282.
- 17.
Castells M. (1996). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 2: the power of identity. Blackwell, Oxford, UK: 124, has a similar description of the tension between global and local: ‘What is distinctive of new social structure, the network society, is that most dominant processes, concentrating power, wealth, and information, are organised in the space of flows. Most human experience, and meaning are still locally based. The disjunction between the two spatial logics is a fundamental mechanism of domination in our societies, because it shifts the core economic, symbolic, and political processes away from the realm where social meaning can be constructed and political control can be exercised.’
- 18.
Cornelis A. (1999). De vertraagde tijd. Stichting Essence, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 174 pp.
- 19.
Ibid.: 8. ‘A retrospective look at the twentieth century reveals a society that learned how to conduct trade in an organised and technological way, in a social control system of obedience and political hierarchy, but without acknowledgement. Power was totalitarian and people were obedient. The twentieth century produced the silent man without self-steering and without communication.’
- 20.
Ibid.: 44. ‘I call the time a hidden programme, the events of the future are not concealed in space but in time (…) Without the concept of a ‘hidden programme’ we cannot conceive of the dimension of time. If we don’t have this concept, because development is reduced to a fourth dimension of space, dominated by repetition, such as in the thinking of the twentieth century, then there is no time for human consciousness.’
- 21.
Ibid.: 11. ‘Man was a spatial object about which decisions were taken, from the centre of political power. But at the turn of the century (…) we see power being decentralised. In itself that is an inevitable and logical development, from the policy standpoint (…) As a politician you can try to get out of it, but then you are left with a country lagging behind (…) Because this concerns a cultural knowledge change in the human spirit. The more a social system is decentralised, the more intelligent that system becomes. Because the number of decision points for control multiplies, because of self-steering and communication between people.’
- 22.
Sloterdijk P. (2006). Het kristalpaleis. Een filosofie van de globalisering. Uitgeverij Boom/SUN, Amsterdam, the Netherlands: 192.
- 23.
Ibid.: 207.
- 24.
Castells M. (2000). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 1: the rise of the network society. Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
- 25.
Castells uses green culture as an umbrella term for what is referred to in the Netherlands as the environmental movement, including the Green political parties.
- 26.
Castells M. (1996). The information age: economy, society and culture. Volume 2: the power of identity. Blackwell, Oxford, UK: 122.
- 27.
Ibid.: 125–126.
- 28.
Ibid.: 127.
- 29.
Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (1998). Ruimtelijke ontwikkelingspolitiek. Wetenschappelijke raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, The Hague, the Netherlands. Instead of the term ‘spatial development policy’, many authors used the term ‘development planning’, but this term completely overlooks one of the aims that the WWR explicitly wanted to achieve, namely lifting spatial planning out of the sectoral and political realm, for which in the Netherlands not only the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment, but also the Ministry of Transport, Water and Public Works, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality and the Ministry of Economic Afairs should be jointly responsible. See for example, Dammers E., F. Verwest, B. Staffhorst and W. Verschoor (2004). Ontwikkelingsplanologie. Lessen uit en voor de praktijk. Ruimtelijk Planbureau, NAi Uitgevers, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
For an explicit plea for the use of the term ‘spatial development policy’, see Rabbinge R. (2006). Ruimtelijke ontwikkelingspolitiek. In: Aarts N., R. During and P. Van der Jagt (eds.) The koop en andere ideeën over de inrichting van Nederland. Wageningen UR, Wageningen, the Netherlands, pp. 195–200.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting Ruimtelijke ordening en Milieubeheer (2001). Ruimte maken, ruimte delen. Vijfde nota over de ruimtelijke ordening 2000/2020 vastgesteld door de ministerraad op 15 december 2000, Den Haag. SDU, The Hague, the Netherlands.
- 32.
For a description and critique of the policy in the Vijfde Nota, refer to Asbeek Brusse W., H. van Dalen and B. Wissink (2002). Stad en land in een nieuwe geografie. Maatschappelijke veranderingen en ruimtelijke dynamiek., Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, The Hague, the Netherlands: 164 ff.
- 33.
Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieu (2004). Nota ruimte, ruimte voor ontwikkeling. SDU Uitgevers, The Hague, the Netherlands.
- 34.
Rabbinge R. (2006). Ruimtelijke ontwikkelingspolitiek. In: Aarts N., R. During and P. Van der Jagt (eds.) The koop en andere ideeën over de inrichting van Nederland. Wageningen UR, Wageningen, the Netherlands, pp. 195–200.
- 35.
For an overview of the spatial consequences of European policy on spatial planning, see Van Ravesteyn N. and D. Evers (2004). Unseen Europe: a survey of eu politics and its impact on spatial development in the Netherlands. NAi Publishers, The Hague, the Netherlands, 157 pp.
- 36.
See for example, Hemel Z. (2008). Middelpunt zoekende krachten. Stedebouw & Ruimtelijke Ordening 89: 28–34. ‘Partly because of the chronic indiference towards big city development (…) and the preoccupation with distributive justice in The Hague, Amsterdam is increasingly focusing on the international playing feld. It is looking to collaborate with other European cities, is active in Brussels, and is entering into relations with New York, Seoul, San Francisco and London. (…) And with some success. Amsterdam is seen as an international centre, and is increasingly regarded by the world as a creative core within the Northwest European lowlands.’ an economic sector, as a category in policy, which traditionally characterised its own domain as ‘non-urban’ and only applied spatial planning at the level of parcels, lots and land reallotment schemes. It is this transcending of all these traditional borders that makes the work on the system innovation of agroparks an interesting way of really perpetrating spatial development policy.
References
Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieu (2004). Nota ruimte, ruimte voor ontwikkeling. SDU Uitgevers, The Hague, the Netherlands.
Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (1992).Ground for choices; four perspectives for the rural areas in the European community. Wetenschappelijke raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, The Hague, the Netherlands.
Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (1994). Duurzame risico’s: Een blijvend gegeven. Report 44, Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, The Hague, the Netherlands. [In Dutch].
Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (1998). Ruimtelijke ontwikkelingspolitiek. Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, The Hague, the Netherlands. [In Dutch].
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Smeets, P.J.A.M. (2011). The network society. In: Smeets, P.J.A.M. (eds) Expedition agroparks. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen. https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-719-6_2
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