Sustainable Community Planning: Lessons from the Netherlands

In 1990, the Dutch Government adopted a national plan to develop integrated and comprehensive policies that would respond on a national, regional, and local level to the need for improved environmental quality for the welfare of current and future generations. The program, called the National Environmental Policy Plan (NEPP), represented a bold effort to develop cooperation and shared responsibility between the public and private sectors setting goals for reduced energy consumption, resource utilization, and improved environmental quality including the reduction of SOl, NOx, and CO2 emissions. This paper reports on key elements of the NEPP and related policies that pertain to sustainable community planning. Although the transferability of policies for one locale to another may be limited by surrounding socio-cultural, economic and environmental conditions, these efforts represent some of the most innovative and pioneering examples of environmental planning currently being explored in Europe and the U.S. and as such deserve our consideration as we seek our own solutions to sustainable planning and