Dreading the future: Ambivalence and doubt in the Dutch urban renewal order

The current historiography of the Dutch urban renewal order focuses on an elite of audacious planners and technocratic civil servants, who allegedly embraced the comprehensive redevelopment of inner cities along functionalist lines. However, professional pamphlets and minutes from the 1950s and 1960s reveal a much more ambivalent and uncertain state of mind in the field of urban renewal, especially in the views put forward by local administrators. This article will demonstrate that insecurity about the dawn of the modern age was crucial for the swiftness with which Dutch planning and political elites abandoned comprehensive redevelopment in the early 1970s.