About this map
How the towns and cities of the Netherlands spread across the land, from the walled towns of 1300 to the sprawling urban regions of today. Colours show when each part of a town was built: dark red for the medieval core, through orange to pale yellow for the districts of the last 30 years. Grey-violet marks ports, heavy industry and Schiphol. For five centuries growth was slow and stayed inside town walls. Holland's towns boomed after the fall of Antwerp in 1585 and in the Golden Age, then barely grew for almost 200 years. Only after the Fortress Act of 1874, the railways and industrialisation did cities break out of their ramparts. The real explosion came after 1945: in 80 years the built-up area of the country grew several times over, first as garden cities around the big cities, then as planned growth towns (Zoetermeer, Nieuwegein, Almere, Lelystad) and finally as VINEX districts built right against the existing cities. Method: about 60 cities are drawn district by district, with each named district appearing in the years it was built. About 110 smaller towns are drawn schematically: an old core plus growth rings sized from their population and the typical age of Dutch housing. Pre-1850 town areas follow published hectare figures for walled towns, or population divided by the densities measured on Jacob van Deventer's 16th-century town maps. From 1900 on, each city's footprint is sized as population divided by a period-typical urban density (about 24,000 people per km2 in big cities around 1900, falling to about 7,500 today). Shapes are schematic: positions of districts are accurate to a few hundred metres, outlines are not surveyed boundaries. Villages and many small towns are left out. Sources: J. de Vries, European Urbanization 1500-1800 (1984); J.C. Visser, Dichtheid van de bevolking in de laat-middeleeuwse stad (Tijdschrift voor Historische Geografie, 1985); Monumenten Inventarisatie Project city descriptions (Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed); RCE protected townscape reports; T. Stol on Middelburg and R.J. de Vries on Enkhuizen (THG 1983); R. Rutte on Dutch town populations; CBS population statistics; Wikipedia city histories; Natural Earth for land, lakes and rivers.
Text version: https://www.movingpolygons.com/map/chrisjager/dutch-cities-grow-13002025.md
Timeline
| Date | What the map shows |
|---|---|
| 1 Jul 1300 | 1300 · Towns get their charters |
| 1 Jul 1400 | 1400 · Walled towns along rivers and coast |
| 1 Jul 1500 | 1500 · Holland is Europe's most urban region |
| 1 Jul 1560 | 1560 · On the eve of the Revolt |
| 1 Jul 1600 | 1600 · Refugees from Antwerp pour in |
| 1 Jul 1650 | 1650 · Golden Age expansions |
| 1 Jul 1700 | 1700 · Amsterdam's canal ring complete |
| 1 Jul 1800 | 1800 · Two centuries of standstill |
| 1 Jul 1850 | 1850 · Still inside the old walls |
| 1 Jul 1875 | 1875 · Fortress Act lets towns break out |
| 1 Jul 1900 | 1900 · Industrial and railway towns |
| 1 Jul 1920 | 1920 · Housing Act garden villages |
| 1 Jul 1940 | 1940 · Interwar ring districts |
| 1 Jul 1950 | 1950 · Rebuilding after the war |
| 1 Jul 1960 | 1960 · Garden cities and high-rise |
| 1 Jul 1970 | 1970 · Overspill to growth towns |
| 1 Jul 1980 | 1980 · Almere, Zoetermeer, Nieuwegein |
| 1 Jul 1990 | 1990 · Growth towns mature |
| 1 Jul 2000 | 2000 · VINEX districts begin |
| 1 Jul 2010 | 2010 · VINEX districts fill in |
| 1 Jul 2025 | 2025 · Today |
Layers
Ports, industry and airport · Built 1995–2025 (VINEX and later) · Built 1970–1995 (growth towns) · Built 1945–1970 · Built 1900–1945 · Built 1800–1900 · Built 1500–1800 (Golden Age) · Built before 1500 (medieval town)
Events
- 1 Jul 1585, Fall of Antwerp (1585): After Spain retook Antwerp in 1585, tens of thousands of Flemish merchants, weavers and printers moved north. Amsterdam, Leiden, Haarlem and Middelburg grew explosively and had to extend their walls.
- 1 Jul 1613, Amsterdam canal ring (1613-1663): The Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht were dug in two phases (1613 west, 1658 east). Amsterdam grew from about 50,000 people in 1600 to some 200,000 by 1700, inside a fourfold larger walled area.
- 1 Jul 1874, Fortress Act (1874): The Vestingwet of 1874 released dozens of fortress towns such as Nijmegen, Breda, Den Bosch and Groningen from their ramparts. Walls were razed and the first districts outside the old towns rose within years.
- 1 Jul 1901, Housing Act (1901): The Woningwet obliged towns to plan their expansions and let housing associations build with state loans. It produced the brick workers districts and garden villages of the 1910s-1930s, such as Spaarndammerbuurt and Tuindorp Vreewijk.
- 1 Jul 1940, Rotterdam bombed (14 May 1940): German bombers destroyed about 2.6 km2 of the city centre and 25,000 homes. Rotterdam was rebuilt as a modern city, and new districts like Zuidwijk and Pendrecht rose on its southern edge.
- 1 Jul 1966, Second Memorandum on Spatial Planning (1966): To protect the Green Heart, growth was bundled into designated growth towns (groeikernen) such as Zoetermeer, Nieuwegein, Purmerend, Alkmaar and Almere. Big cities lost population while these towns doubled or tripled.
- 1 Jul 1976, Almere: first residents (1976): Built on the Flevopolder drained in 1968, Almere grew from nothing to over 220,000 people within 50 years, the fastest-growing city in Dutch history.
- 1 Jul 1993, VINEX (1991): The Fourth Memorandum Extra placed about 450,000 new homes in large districts right against existing cities: Leidsche Rijn, IJburg, Ypenburg, Vathorst, Meerhoven and dozens more.