In the Netherlands in 1941, under German occupation, a new centralised legal regime was instituted that mandated spatial planning on the local, regional, and national level. In the ensuing years, this legal foundation evolved in such a way that “survey before plan” became a core ingredient of spatial planning. The resulting demand for socio-spatial research across government layers was largely captured by young, new university graduates (primarily of human geography and sociology). They obtained employment in governmental and para-governmental spatial planning institutions in the post-war Netherlands. This generation institutionalised the new field of planology as the Dutch translation of spatial planning, eventually culminating in the first planology university chair in 1962. Drawing on theoretical ideas on modernisation and professionalisation, this paper explores how and why academia and policy co-produced planology as a professional field in the Netherlands between 1945 and 1962.

The paper builds on extensive historical research of academic journals and in the archives of governmental institutions and professional organisations. Practically, it thereby shows how socio-spatial research became a centrepiece of the globally heralded Dutch spatial planning tradition. On a more abstract level, the paper offers an exemplary case of the professionalisation of a research tradition and the development of multi-scalar knowledge networks and interactions between academia and policy.