ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some attempts at comprehensive spatial planning under way in the central part of the Netherlands. In a densely urbanized country like the Netherlands, new interventions in flood defense and water management also create the need for new types of comprehensive spatial planning that incorporate urban planning, economic development, landscape design, and environmental planning. The thinking on coastal defense has become much more advanced against the background of international discourse on climate change and rising sea levels. The almost unbroken row of dunes in this central coastal area protects the core of the Holland provinces, which contain the major cities, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, major industrial areas, and an expanse of intensive agriculture and market gardening. Since the 1980s, coastal erosion has been countered by sand nourishment, which entails replenishing the beach or foreshore with sand that is suction-dredged from the sea. Strengthening the weak spots is only the first step in a major coastal renovation program.
