Parkmanagement as a tool for careful industrial land-use planning

During the second half of the 1990s the combination of ecological and economic targets in industrial land-use planning became an official part of spatial-economic policy in the Netherlands. A growing number of business locations are now being developed or re-developed as 'sustainable business sites'. At the same time, 'parkmanagement' came into existence as a new tool for development and control of business sites for industry and services. Parkmanagement is now regarded as one of the obvious instruments to realize sustainable (or 'careful') land use on business parks. However, there is now a question about whether it is wrong for local governments (which in the Dutch case are responsible for most land development schemes) to have so much participation in parkmanagement initiatives. There is a threat that local governments are welcoming parkmanagement as a fashionable way to impose new regulations on business establishments, and ignore the evidence from practice. Such evidence shows that parkmanagement is most successful when organized with the involvement of private enterprises. This would also be more in line with the modern interaction-oriented planning theory (consensus planning). The paper describes the principal dilemmas facing local governments in business site development, the theoretical options for influencing the development process of the sites, and the set of actions that could be part of a parkmanagement strategy. These can be arranged on a 'ladder' or range of activities, from rather simple facilities serving individual companies' needs, such as maintenance and security, to more complex co-operation projects in combined transport or energy supply, and ultimately lead to schemes for connecting material flows of production processes. The successive stages of the ladder of business site facilities can be combined with different forms and stages of process organization.