Vinex Atlas [Hardcover]

In this meticulous and beautifully designed book, Jelte Boeijenga and Jeroen Mensink have set the field for a crucial debate on the future of housing policy, as applicable to Britain as to their native Netherlands. To what extent can the state delegate responsibility for urban planning to the market? How can architects maintain an influence over important decisions which shape communities when their role is eroded to that of façade designer? If the residents are happy does it matter that the architecture is formulaic and skin-deep?

The adoption by the Dutch government in 1993 of the supplement to the Forth Report on Spatial Planning (known by its acronym VINEX) marked a radical shift in policy, both in location of future development and in the way it would be implemented. In the 1960s and 1970s the aim of policy had been to encourage a nationwide dispersal of population. In contrast, the forth report promoted compact urbanisation whereby development would be focused in and adjacent to existing cities so as to increase urban vitality and to reduce private car usage.

More controversially, it devolved responsibility for housing provision from central government to regional administrations. Subsidies to housing associations were cut and private developers were given wider freedom to determine the exact form of development. Covenants between central government and the municipalities defined areas where development would occur and it is these `outlying' sites, many on former farmland that are described in the Vinex Atlas.

The authors have collected data on every Vinex site and regularised it to enable direct comparison of characteristics such as density, dwelling type and area of paved land. 828,000 houses were built in the Netherlands in the Vinex period from 1995 - 2005, so this is no mean feat. The codified system of colours, symbols and numbers takes some getting into but there is a mine of information here which is increasingly revealing the more you pore over it.

Detailed studies are devoted to 52 of the largest Vinex sites. Each gets a 1:10000 plan and a pre-development aerial photo at the same scale for comparison. Most sites also get a single black & white street-level photo and a more detailed 1:2000 plan of a specific neighbourhood. The photos try to show the relationship between public and private domains but are eerily devoid of people.

Detailed analysis of each area would run to many volumes of this size but such clinical representation does nothing to get under the skin of the actual neighbourhoods. The Atlas presents a sanitised vision of the communities with very little sense of what it might be like to live in them.

The only critical analysis is found in the introduction, an excellent, if deadpan summary of the Vinex programme and the rough ride it has received since its inception from journalists and politicians based on a supposed lack of quality. Surveys of residents however show overall that they are happy with their homes and surroundings. Although the authors conclude that built results have stayed close to their urban objectives, car ownership has not declined and the Vinex areas are increasingly seen as just the next generation of suburbs.

Policy in the post-Vinex era is moving further toward wishes of the home-buyer, 80% of whom state a preference to live in a freestanding house with ample parking for their cars. As the authors conclude, when good results were achieved it was often due to creative design at the micro-scale of the residential environment rather than the product of a strong masterplan.

While this book is fascinating, its authors have become mesmerised by the data and its presentation at the expense of incisive criticism of the specific projects, which could have made it an invaluable reference tool. I can't help thinking that it is just this obsession with regular order and graphics that makes many of the housing layouts in the Vinex areas so banal.