The Search for Practical Applications in Dutch Urban and Regional Forecasting

Abstract

In contrast with the context of national forecasting, which to a high degree remained the domain of scientific discourse of the issue of future population, urban and regional forecasting were not a matter to be dealt with without engagement. Here it is not scientific interest in the population problem which was the stimulus to methodological innovation, but the context of urban policy and decision making. Policy making required more precise information with respect to investments to be made and demands to be met. Forecasters were not in a position to discuss the appropriateness of speculative demographic forecasting in the absence of a law of population growth and as members of urban town planning teams they could not — as Van Zanten thought he could afford to abstain from making speculations on the future course of urban population. This accounts for the significance attributed to population forecasting in town planning. The urban housing context, as discussed in the preceding chapter, accounts for the efforts vested in the accurate estimation of the current housing need. Urban and regional planners, however, were particularly interested in long-term population forecasts and the consequences of future population development for housing and other needs.

‘We do not search after a certainty for the future that cannot be given, but after the most likely hypothesis. We cannot obtain more; we should not be satisfied with less. The more profound our investigations, the more precise our assumptions for the future, the better our plans.’

L.H.J. Angenot in 1934⁸⁴