What is suburbanisation?
Suburbanisation is the movement of residents out of the city into surrounding towns and suburbs, while many keep working in the city. Shops and businesses follow later. The result is a spreading urban region of housing estates around the old centre.
In the Netherlands suburbanisation was deliberately steered from the 1960s onwards. The Second Spatial Planning Memorandum (1966) chose “clustered deconcentration”: growth concentrated in selected places rather than everywhere. From 1972 so-called groeikernen (growth centres) were designated, among them Zoetermeer, Almere, Lelystad, Nieuwegein, Houten and Purmerend. They were followed by Vinex (Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra, 1991), large new districts on the edges of existing cities built between 1995 and 2005, such as Leidsche Rijn in Utrecht and IJburg in Amsterdam.
Typical consequences are car dependence, heavy commuting and estates of houses from a single period and of a single type, often terraced houses.
In practice
- Find the build period. A house in a Dutch growth centre usually dates from the 1970s or 1980s; a Vinex house from roughly 1995 to 2005.
- Expect concrete in terraced houses. Much housing of this period was cast in situ (often with tunnel formwork) or built from precast concrete. Party walls and internal walls are then often loadbearing concrete.
- Have openings designed. A new opening in a concrete wall or floor needs a structural engineer and usually a steel or concrete lintel. Drilling and chasing concrete is harder work than in calcium silicate blockwork.
- Check the insulation. Houses from the 1970s and 1980s are only modestly insulated by today’s standards. Check walls, roof and floor before you renovate; retrofit insulation often pays.
- Use the repetition. Neighbours have the same house, so an extension or dormer has often been done in the street already. Ask, and check the zoning plan for what is allowed.
Common mistake: assuming an internal wall in a terraced house of this period is not loadbearing. In cast-in-situ construction it often is.
Related terms
- Zoning plan
- Urban renewal
- Urban infill
- Cast-in-situ construction
- Retrofit insulation
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