THE RANDSTAD A METROPOLIS

The common view of Dutch policy-makers is that the Randstad ought to function as one single metropolitan area. At the same time, the government retains its emphasis on keeping the central area of the Randstad as a green belt. The authors confront the normative model with daily residential mobility and traffic flows. It becomes obvious that the interactions among the metropolitan areas remain relatively weak, that is to say at the same level as the interactions on the national scale. Besides, within the Common Market there turns out to be hardly any correlation between the size of an urban area and prosperity. The sort of functions which cities fulfil is much more important to their affluence. The goal of turning the Randstad into a 'world city' should be abandoned. The government should take the physical configuration of the Randstad as a given and improve the international functions of each of the individual areas.