'No housing without working’: heavy focus on housing poses risks

The rapid growth of Brainport Eindhoven is creating an increasingly urgent spatial question: where will all these new residents work in the future? According to Cees-Jan Pen, professor of Sustainable Urban Transformation, the debate about the region risks becoming too narrowly focused on housing, while space for business and economic activity is coming under pressure.

Speaking at an entrepreneurs’ breakfast at Brainport Industries Campus, Pen argued that discussions about the region’s future too often boil down to the number of new homes to be built. “You cannot have housing without jobs,” he emphasized. Building houses without simultaneously reserving sufficient space for economic activity will ultimately lead to structural problems, he warned.

Growth requires spatial choices

The Brainport region is facing a major leap in scale. The ambition to accommodate hundreds of thousands of additional residents and workers requires new housing, infrastructure, and facilities. But according to Pen, this growth must also translate into space for companies, workplaces, and production.

Public debate, he said, largely revolves around “building hundreds or preferably thousands of homes.” At the same time, he poses a simple question: where will the residents of all those new homes work?

According to Pen, that question often remains conspicuously unanswered.

He sees this problem not only in Brainport but across the Netherlands. The housing shortage dominates political debate, while the availability of business space receives far less attention. This imbalance, he argues, could eventually lead to economic bottlenecks and an overloaded mobility system.

Integrating housing and jobs

Pen referred to recent spatial studies on the so-called “network city” and “nebula city.” These analyses, he said, emphasize that housing and employment must be much more closely integrated into regional planning. If not, a mobility crisis could emerge as large numbers of residents are forced to commute daily to other regions for work.

The core of his message is that economic development and housing construction must always be planned together. First, determine where economic activity and employment will develop, and only then organize large-scale housing logically around those locations.

Brainport East as part of the solution

For the Brainport region itself, Pen sees concrete options. One of them is the development of a new employment area, often referred to as Brainport East. Such a location could provide space for companies that currently struggle to expand.

At the same time, he stressed that new business parks are only part of the solution. The greatest gains, he believes, lie in making better use of existing industrial areas. Many of these sites are economically crucial but suffer from aging infrastructure, fragmentation, or inefficient land use.

Pen therefore advocates greater investment in restructuring, sustainability, and more intensive use of existing employment locations. A significant share of the national income is generated in these areas, he noted, while policy and investments often focus primarily on housing.

From housing politics to spatial-economic strategy

Pen’s warning fits into a broader debate about the limits of growth in Brainport. The region is seen as one of the economic engines of the Netherlands, but that growth is putting increasing pressure on space, infrastructure, and quality of life.

According to Pen, this requires a different way of thinking: no longer housing construction as a stand-alone political scoreboard, but an integrated spatial-economic strategy in which housing, jobs, and mobility are designed together.

Or as he summarized it: the challenge is not only how many houses are built, but how the region ensures that the people who will live there can also work nearby.

Without that balance, he warns, Brainport’s economic strength could ultimately become the victim of its own success.