From transposition to contextualization: The co-evolution of EU nature conservation directives and urban development in the Amsterdam region

In 1979 with the Bird Directive, the EU adopted its first nature legislation. Since then various other directives were introduced, which all have an effect on urban development. This papers deals with the effect of the national implementation of the Bird and Habitat Directives in the Netherlands and their effects on urban development in and around the Lake Marker/Lake IJ area near Amsterdam. The paper shows that at first the influence of these Directives was underestimated and that possibly developments have been realized alien to the Directives. Moreover it took several years before Dutch courts came to an unequivocal interpretation of the Directives. So a period of ignorance was followed by a period of (legal) confusion. From approximately 2000 onward this changed and it looked like that the Directives would seriously hinder or even block further urban development in Lake IJ due to a more unequivocal interpretation of these Directives. However from this year onward various governments and nongovernmental organizations tried to contextualize the Directives in such a way that new urban development could continue. By various co-evolutionary arrangements they explored alternatives to combine urban and nature development in a innovative way by reframing the problem through a widening of the spatial as well as temporal scope of these developments.