Jurriaan van Stigt
There was a time when the Netherlands had a story. A broad story about how to organize a country, about the connection between housing, working, and life. That story came to an abrupt end in 2010 when VROM, the dedicated Ministry, was dissolved. With that bureaucratic reorganization, more than just a department disappeared; an entire way of thinking was lost.
I often think back to that time, to the years when this country was built by people who believed in the power of planning. Architect Berlage designed Amsterdam-Zuid as a moral structure. The architects of the Amsterdam School built social housing as if they were cathedrals. Later, Van Eesteren shaped a city as a living organism with his General Expansion Plan. These were people who understood that urban planning is not a technical profession, but a cultural act. They saw the connections: between home and street, between neighborhood and landscape, between present and future. Thus, the Netherlands became the land of the integral approach – unique in the world.
Today we look around us and see the price of that lost coherence. Our water quality is the worst in Europe. We emit more nitrogen than any other European country. Our CO₂ reduction lags far behind. And we still treat ecology as a side issue, rather than as a foundation.
Yet there is hope. In small circles, a new awareness is growing. Architectural firms are experimenting with timber construction and circular materials. Researchers are seeking an urbanism that no longer revolves around growth, but around well-being. They are rediscovering what is truly valuable – the same thing I still see with the Dogon in Mali: everything is connected.
The Netherlands has everything it needs to lead again: our tradition of planning, our ecological awareness, our culture of collaboration. What is missing is the courage to tell a new story. Not a story of growth and control, but of care and connection. The cosmic order is not a mystical past. It is a possible future – if we have the imagination to shape it anew.