Utrecht goes RO

Two nights ago I attended the meeting of the groenlinks utrecht bestuur. We haven't seen each other in a while, so there was a busy agenda, with many interesting issues. Not really meaningful to walk through all of them, but for one exception... It looks like groenlinks utrecht is going Ruimtelijk Ordening!

Indeed, along the meeting several different issues ended in RO. Take for example our starting strategy for the beginselen discussie: in June 19 we are organizing a brainstorm on the groenlinks visie for big (dutch) cities. Indeed we have been thinking on what would be the way to bring the experience of utrecht localos to the national arena of the beginselen discussie, and after a proposal of Tjeerd, our vz, we will focus in what groenlinks think is a nice city. How can we plan it? What situations require immediate attention? is security? or is building of social houses? is it achterstand wijken? or is accessibility? This issues might find a place in a beginselen from groenlinks. After all, we are a urban party...

Then, later, we talk about alive issues in the local politics. And indeed, there is an interesting tension in between the city government (in which we have two aldermen) and our people in the city council. It looks like the city government goes for preserving the city as it is, and our councilors go for the building of new social housing. Surely another issue on Ruimtelijke Ordening.

And then, even later, we were informed that the new werkgroep from our afdeling, Ruimtelijke Ordening werkgroep that is, not only manage to recruit in couple of months a bunch of active members, but also counts with the participation of two of our city councillors! Which more or less guarantees that such a werkgroep will have a definitive influence in our politics.

And, if for the sake of the argument I would talk about the province now... it is important to notice that the person that was bestuur member and now is elected at the province, is Jasper Fastl... our expert in... Ruimtelijke Ordening.

So... are we going urban, or what?