Aviation pioneer Albert Plesman introduced the term ‘Randstad Holland’ (Rim City Holland) in the 1930s while flying across the Netherlands and noticing a strip of cities at the edge of a circle of open agricultural area in the centre. The term became popular in Dutch spatial policy in the 1950s, when employment and population grew rapidly in the western regions (in and around Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague). This ‘Dutch metropolis’ gained international renown when Gerald Burke published a book entitled Greenheart Metropolis in 1966. In the same year, the book World Cities by Peter Hall catapulted the Randstad into the global league of large cities. The Randstad has been the undisputed economic, cultural, political and demographic focus of the Netherlands since the Middle Ages. But since the introduction of the term ‘metropolis’ discussions have been ongoing about whether this character is in fact desirable, about how the Randstad should develop further and about how it should be governed. These discussions are continued in an original fashion with the government’s new vision entitled ‘Randstad Strategic Agenda 2040’.