Judith Norbart: Our living environment requires more than just plus points

November 19, 2025

^{This column was originally written in Dutch. This is an English translation.}

A 1.3% increase in purchasing power sounds positive, but it is meaningless if shops disappear, housing remains scarce and sustainable offices are not built. The 2026 Budget Memorandum offers some incentives, but structural choices are lacking, even though these sectors are essential for future-proof living environments.

By Judith Norbart, Director, IVBN

 
Although the Budget Memorandum focuses on the quality of the physical living environment, there is no integrated policy for our inner cities. This is despite the fact that a healthy mix of retail, housing and offices forms the backbone of vibrant inner cities. Moreover, it is precisely in this context that liveable neighbourhoods and a “high-quality living environment” take on meaning. When shops disappear, the city loses its appeal. Without offices, dynamism and interaction disappear. Investment is therefore desperately needed, but the government is postponing real choices in anticipation of the elections.

Our inner cities face major challenges. The needs of people in cities are changing, and local authorities must respond to this. Meanwhile, we are seeing acute problems in various places across our country. Shops are disappearing, resulting in vacant premises, a decline in visitor numbers and reduced social safety. Residents are missing amenities and entrepreneurs are seeing their turnover decline. Meanwhile, municipalities are struggling to maintain social cohesion and safety in neighbourhoods where meeting places are disappearing and streets are losing their vitality.

Fortunately, there are also plenty of cities that demonstrate that investing in an attractive city centre pays off, with more visitors, more activity, and a stronger local economy. Opportunities arise when the market and government are able to work together to create sustainable and dynamic living environments that are functional and bring together living, working, and recreation.

Coherence as the key to broad prosperity

A vibrant city centre revolves around the people who live, work and shop there. If one link is missing, the whole thing becomes unbalanced. This requires an integrated approach. Yet the Budget Memorandum lacks a vision of this coherence. There is no plan for retail, no breakthrough in housing construction and no prospects for sustainable offices, let alone a paragraph that literally brings these functions together. Yet it is precisely this combination – the living environment – that is essential for broad prosperity and a strong economy. The lack of a coherent vision increases the risk that cities will become less attractive and that liveability, safety and economic vitality will come under pressure.

Time for structural choices

The upcoming cabinet formation must go beyond short-term thinking in terms of purchasing power gains. The question is: how do we want to design our living environments in the coming decades? Do we want living environments where living, working and shopping reinforce each other? If so, stimulating policies are needed for these complex tasks. Think of tax policies that enable housing construction above shops and regulatory stability to attract long-term capital for investment in real estate. Predictability is crucial for investors and entrepreneurs: only with stable rules can they make the large investments that are so desperately needed.

These challenges require cooperation between the national government, market parties and municipalities. Together, we can achieve broad prosperity. First and foremost, this requires an integrated approach and making choices to facilitate investments in city centres, housing and sustainable offices.

From pluses to perspective

What is needed is vision and trust: government, market and municipalities that reinforce each other over the long term. Only then can incidental increases in purchasing power be transformed into structural prospects.

Without structural choices, our living environments lose cohesion and perspective. Investing in living environments is not an expense, but the engine of a resilient society. It is therefore time to opt for structural investments.