Valley and Hillridge

The countryside of the Gelderse Vallei is in a state of continuous development through the increase of scale and change of function of agrarian businesses, new building on the outskirts of villages, the construction of infrastructure, the improvement of water management, and the development of new areas of natural beauty. These developments have an impact on the landscape: there is an increase in the building up of the area and the risk of uniformity. This affects the quality of the environment with which people interact and thereby the vitality of the region.

On behalf of the Projectbureau Vallei en Heuvelrug, we have developed – together with representatives of the agrarian sector, seven participating local authorities and the provincial authorities of Gelderland and Utrecht – a broadly supported set of environmental planning elements that have been made accessible and expandable through the application of a matrix. To reinforce the identity and specificity of the landscape of the Gelderse Vallei, we shift the emphasis from ‘adaptation to the landscape of new features’ to ‘building the landscape on the basis of the strength of new features’. The thread running through these elements is an attractive and inspirational perspective on the future, but the route itself proceeds step by step in an organic way rather than being planned beforehand. The catalyst of the improvement of the landscape is formed by building initiatives. Examples are: the construction of part of a wooded bank that determines the structure at the same time as the construction of new stables; the planting of a picturesque copse in an adjacent triangle; or designing a nature-friendly route for the bank of the stream behind the plot of land.

Local authorities are primarily the stimulator and facilitator of the process. At an early stage they open discussions with farmers and private parties to jointly investigate what the possibilities are, as well as evaluating building plans on the basis of the environmental planning elements. Building the landscape from the bottom up leads to an improvement of the specific environment on the spot where the person taking the initiative actually experiences the landscape and considers it important. It is a new, organic form of landscape management: building the landscape on an intermediate scale.