In search for the sustainable urban region

The containment of urban growth and the maintenance of a certain level of concentration within the urban pattern are policy goals to be found in the new `National Spatial Strategy¿. According to some national planning has only been partially successful in this respect thanks to the fact that local municipalities have always sought possibilities for development and by doing this were constantly undermining the national ambitions. The focus of this paper is however not on the success or failure of the national urban concentration policy, which in the political reality is and has always been a policy aiming for concentrated deconcentration. Instead we focus on the content of national policy: can the policy to guide urban development in the direction of concentrated deconcentration be interpreted as a contribution towards sustainable urban development?