Abrahamse, J.E., R. Rutte

Verstedelijking in Nederland. Duizend jaar ruimtelijke ontwikkeling bekeken en vergeleken.

Historisch-geografisch tijdschrift 29 (2011) 106 - 129.

Naar de geschiedenis van steden in Nederland is veel onderzoek gedaan. Uiteenlopende thema's en verschillende periodes kwamen uitgebreid aan bod. Ook individuele steden kregen veel aandacht, maar een vergelijkende overzichtsstudie waarin de ruimtelijke ontwikkeling vanaf het ontstaan tot heden wordt geanalyseerd, ontbreekt. Daarom hebben onderzoekers en kaartenmakers aan de Faculteit Bouwkunde van de Technische Universiteit in Delft en van de Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed in Amersfoort besloten om samen een Atlas van de verstedelijking in Nederland te maken. Nadat de aanpak en de opzet van deze atlas kort uiteen zijn gezet, worden in dit artikel de eerste resultaten van het onderzoek gepresenteerd.

Urbanization in the Netherlands. A thousand years of spatial development.

The history of Dutch cities has been the subject of extensive research. Many themes and periods, as well as many individual cities, have been studied. However, a comparative overview of Dutch urbanization has never been written. Therefore, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology decided to launch the Atlas of Dutch Urbanization. This research project, the first results of which are presented in this article, aims at describing and explaining the growth of cities from early mediaeval times up till the present. This long-term overview of urbanization explains the locations, structures and appearances of our present-day cities. Many questions about city design, transformation and heritage protection can only be answered on the base of such an overview. In this article, an overall picture of Dutch urbanization is presented on the basis of a classification by their origins of today's 35 largest cities. From this classification five groups of cities emerge. The oldest cities developed in the 11th and 12th century, all situated on the borders of wide rivers, on locations throughout the Netherlands. A second group of cities formed in the 13th and 14th century on the borders of smaller rivers. The third group of late mediaeval cities consists of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, the three largest cities of our time. The first two are located on the fringes of the core area of the province of Holland, on locations excellently connected to the sea and the hinterland, while The Hague developed as the administrative centre from the 16th century onwards. From around 1400 AD, no new cities emerged until the 19th century. From 1870 onwards, new cities arose along the new railway infrastructure in the sandy areas in the east and south as a result of rapid industrialization. At the same time, suburbanization led to the emergence of residential towns. After World War II, a number of new towns were created to absorb the rapid population growth of the big cities in the west. In this period, the roadway infrastructure played a leading role. These first observations show that the emergence and growth of cities is connected to their original functions, but also to the landscape in which they are located, and their location with regard to the main infrastructures.