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The Dutch take pride in their policy on housing and the development of urban land. After the Second World War, the Housing Act -dating from 1901 -was elaborated into specific rules for physical planning and a system of subsidizing the production and management of a large number of social rented dwellings. The effectiveness of the Dutch approach was based upon the synergy of state interventions in physical planning, housing and land policy. This article analyses the performance of this system in two respects. Firstly, it looks at how the system affected the influence of prices of virgin land and of land development costs on decisions in physical planning, and what effect it had on prices of serviced land for social housing. This section is based on an analysis of Dutch land policy and the resulting land prices for housing over the entire post-war period. Secondly, this article considers what the Dutch system contributed to social integration in Dutch cities, and whether it gave lower -income groups access to locations with better quality than the free market would have offered. This second part of the study is based on empirical data on the socio-spatial development of The Hague and its region.Regarding the existing English literature on the successes of Dutch policy, the author suggests a more carefully balanced appraisal. This leads to some points for a research agenda for land policy in the Netherlands, given the rapid shift to marketled production in Dutch housing.

The aim of this article is to discuss approaches to services integration for older people in urban and rural aging environments in The Netherlands, and the preliminary effects of these approaches on local aging conditions. In urban areas, services integration revolves around the creation of functional spatial hierarchy. In rural areas, the emphasis is on forging links between service providers. Outcomes for health and use of professional care services are similar. Outcomes for housing, informal care, and accessibility of services differ between urban and rural areas in ways that can be traced back to local aging conditions and elements of the specific approach to services integration used. In both urban and rural areas, much more could be done to connect formal programs to the lifeworlds of older dwellers.