This paper adds to the literature on the 'performance' rather than the 'conformance' of plans, relating the arguments to an issue that is under-researched: the evaluation of communicative planning. With the 'IOR-School', it argues that the purpose of planning is to improve the quality of decisions. To establish how plans can do that, the paper looks at the interaction between the maker of a plan and those responsible for subsequent decisions as a process of communication. Drawing inspiration from literature according an inalienable role to the reader of a text in interpreting it, the paper proposes a modified design for performance research.

Abstract. There are a number of different criteria for measuring the success of plans in planning. In the planning literature there is a debate about the criterion of conformance (that is, whether spatial development is according to plan) as opposed to performance (that is, whether the plan has shown the way to better decisionmaking), which is, in fact, different from performance measurement. In this paper both criteria are applied to measure the success of Dutch national concentration policies in the``Fourth Memorandum on Spatial PlanningöPlus''. The author shows that the urban containment policies conform well to the plan but perform badly in terms of improving current decisionmaking on the stagnation of housing production in the Netherlands. Moreover, the present stagnation of housing production is planned stagnation. With this result, the author shows that conformance and performance are independent criteria for measuring planning success, and that plans (as set out in the``Fourth Memorandum on Spatial PlanningöPlus'') with high conformance may still perform badly on the performance criterion.

In The Netherlands, national urban regeneration policies are undergoing a radical process of decentralisation. Many major national funds are concentrated in an Investment Budget for Urban Regeneration (IUR) and are decentralised to 30 major cities and the 12 provinces for the smaller municipalities. Establishing the IUR is seen as an important precondition for regeneration policies in the Dutch context. The paper discusses the capacity of local government to be the central government agent for the urban regeneration policies being promoted by the IUR. Decentralising urban regeneration policies involves more than decentralising the budget. The domain of local government must have sufficient capacity to engage in the policies decentralised by national government.

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a b s t r a c tExcessive land use regulations aimed at containing urban sprawl have been criticised, because they may overcompensate for the external effects of uncontrolled greenfield development and contribute to stagnation in house building. Taxes on building in green spaces may be an instrument for balancing urban growth and the protection of the landscape. This paper discusses development tax and puts it in the context of other planning instruments. It reviews a recent policy debate in the Netherlands relating to the introduction of an open space tax and the research into this tax. It also investigates the policy process, which resulted in the tax not being introduced. Finally, conclusions are drawn as to whether the taxation of development may be a useful instrument to complement other planning measures.

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