The Netherlands urban planning has evolved until 1990 in coherence with the image of a hamonious, planable society, which has found its expression, on the one side, the ideal of a fair social-economic distribution and, on the spatial side, which is the subject of this aticle, the ideal to create an aestheticaly ordered environment. The National Reports on Spatial Planning indicate that since the 1960's these ideals have been envisaged in practice: the desire to keep urbanisation as compact as possible to spread a network of small cities, towns and villages throughout the country to prevent the gowth of !arge metropolitan aeas - together with the aim to protect open, green spaces from urbanisation and to restrain the growth of auto-mobility. Dutch planning ideals can be characterised by a strong regulation, of the profile combined with clear, functional divisions in space. Since the end of the 1980's, Dutch urbanists and architects have criticised the monofunctionalitty and regulated aesthetics, and became interested in a more dynamic concept of urban planning, which accepts a degree of uncertainty and can produce a more differentiated space. However, the question is, whether this change of ideals implies a shift in paradigm, or whether changes have occured within the same set of ideals.