In case of the issue of the lake bed polders. Also within these area farmers preferable want to continue their activities on a economical sustainable manner, to do so they need water. The gaining of water in these area drains the water of the adjacent peat land nature areas and are therefore damaged. This resultts in a critical position by nature preservation organizations concerning the water demand of farmers in the lake bed polders. As a result of salinazation this situation will even worsen in time, as there will be an increasing need to flush the areas with sweet water. Water boards will also seek in these areas for a sustainable water management of the area in this case, trying to balance the interest of all parties, but putting safety up front. Whereas drinking water companies will also have a claim on the scarce water. Finally in the case of urbanisation of the Green Heart there are also different points of view that can be identified. Real estate developers will continue to seek for areas where they can develop their projects. The chamber of commerce will support this in case there is a lack of good business facilities. Municipalities will prefer developments as they can gain revenues from the development activities, at the same time it can be politically sensitive, they have to balance. The province will look for a coherent, sustainable development on the scale of the region. Whereas nature preservation organisation most likely will oppose any kind of urban expansion. iNTENSIFY & EXTENSIFY The developed stakeholder-issue diagram made it clear that besides two general issues (preservation of cultural heritage and ongoing urbanisation) there are two issues
that are strongly related to local landscape conditions. The issue of peat oxidation is concerning the peat lands and the issue of salinazation is more concerning the lakebed polders. Besides these two issues there are other significant differences related to the two landscape types. Commissioned by national government the nota belvedere (Feddes, 1999) has tried to identified the most important cultural historic areas in Netherlands,. Interesting enough almost all the areas chosen within the Green Heart are located in the peat lands, this is also concluded by Borger (1997). Third difference is that in contrary to the peat lands all lake bed polders are positioned close to the urbanised west wing of the Randstad. These polders originally are also the products of the urban citizens, as most of the lake bed polders were reclaimed as an investment to the urban inhabitants of the surrounding cities. The largest part of the peat land is more disconnected from the urban, located in the gap in the Randstad, between Utrecht and Dordrecht. These areas are also related to the much more rural areas of the other Waarden , like the Bommelerwaard and the Tielerwaard. However within both of these landscape types there is one player, one focal actor that stands out: the dairy farmer. They own most of the land and their farming activities for a large part define how these landscapes look like. Although all dairy farmers have to deal with the same kind of financial problems, they all have to deal with a loss of income due to decreasing subsidies and a lowering of world market prices, the landscapes they are active in provide different physical problems. Whereas dairy farming as a result of the granularity of the polder structure and the oxidation of peat have no real possibilities to further industrialize, the lake bed
Vecht area
OudAde
Zoeterwoudeweipoort
Nieuwkoop Harmelen
Lopikerwaard Krimpenerwaard
Vijfherenlanden
Alblasserwaard
FIG 38. BELVEDERE AREAS, Overview of the most precious cultural historical areas in the Green Heart. The list has been made for the whole of the Netherlands and has been compiled by the Dutch National Government in 1999. It aims to stress the importance of cultural history in spatial planning.The light green areas are the lake bed polders, the dark green aeras the peat lands. After Feddes, 1999.
polders with their rational structure do have this potential. Also the nearness of the Greenport infrastructure makes the outlook of the dairy farmers in the lake bed polders different as that of their colleagues in the
peat lands. The developed spatial planning strategy takes up the differences between the two different kind of polders, the peat lands and the lake bed polders as its framework, its GREEN BELTS REVISITED 80