Randstad Holland belongs to no one. And let’s keep it that way.

What most people don’t know is that although the Netherlands is densely populated, Randstad Holland is one of the most open metropolises in the world. I did the math. Everyone of the 7 million Randstad Holland residents have an average of 600m2 of land. Of course, this number doesn’t say much. But by comparison, in Los Angeles, known for its low density, residents have an average of 500m2. In Berlin, London, Paris or Rome, this number is up to 5 times lower.

Yet many Randstad Holland residents are short of breath. There is much, much of the same and it sometimes feels like there is no escape. “To summarize it in an image, the Netherlands has become one big city, everyone moves, you meet each other uninvited, you often get in each other’s way,” said then Prime Minister Kok in 1995. But if the facts speak otherwise, then density is apparently not a matter of measurement but of perception.

Apparently we do not recognize ourselves in the Randstad and it does not meet our expectations. It is a theme that fascinates me enormously. How is it possible that the whole of the Netherlands is planned, but that we are nevertheless dissatisfied with the end result? I have been looking into it in recent years.

Now I am an urban planner by education. So I will most likely be allowed to sit in the dock with my colleagues – a designated place for some introspection. If I then intend to look back and look for the basis of my profession, I end up with the street, as is If I continue to follow the analogy, and patterns of streets should lead directly to the nature and individuality, like a house tells the story of its inhabitants.

In lectures on this subject, to reinforce this statement, I like to start with a photo of the Overtoom in Amsterdam and wonder, out loud and rhetorically, whether this is Barcelona or Oslo. No, of course not. The photo shows alternating buildings with large vertical windows and shops in the plinth, a GVB tram and a crossing cargo bike with father and child. This can only be the Netherlands and a little connoisseur sees Amsterdam. Apparently there are so many local characteristics attached to a street that any mistake is excluded from the outset. In this way, millions of streets around the world are basically exactly the same – from A to B with buildings on both sides – but in the end no two streets are the same.

Do I see more than there is? Then I also try it from the other side. We Dutch praise ourselves for our moderation. Can we see that in the use of our streets? Indeed, our country has no boulevards. Our country usually does not put buildings of any importance in a prominent place. Museums and ministries are not located on large squares or at the end of a monumental street, but often carelessly in the city. Most of us will be able to form an image of Berlin rather than of our own House of Representatives. For our head of state, no Buckingham Palace or White House, but an invisible palace in the woods, located on a street where cars are not allowed. The street puts a building in its place, in our case we use the relationship with the street to make certain buildings less dominant.

I notice that I have a bite, so I want to continue. What applies to an individual building or a single street should therefore also apply to the entire system of streets. For just as we admire a painting by standing in front of it, or study a sculpture by looking at it from all sides, we see everyday reality by walking, cycling and driving in it. From this it must be deduced that not only the shape of streets and roads, but also the pattern that roads form are guiding in the perception of reality. Roads order the city and determine the way in which parts relate to each other. The Hague has straight streets, in all shapes and sizes. The streets are formal through symmetrical profiles, through the central placement of statues and through stately buildings. The streets are less hierarchical. Nowhere is an important building in a line of sight or streets leading directly to the heart The whole of canals, streets and alleys seems to hold everything together like a web, in which differences between rank and class are effortlessly incorporated. The fundamental sharpness of building in the building line makes a precise distinction between public and private. Perhaps this is due to the great degree of collectivity that can be felt on the street. Of all Dutch cities, Amsterdam is the most of all of us.

The residents have made the city and then the city passes this on to future generations. The urban culture is perpetuated in the network of streets. Logical and appropriate connections and connections strengthen the network, while conversely, interruptions or faulty connections result in disruptions in the network. So when we experience the Randstad as cramped, the roads and connections are apparently made in such a way that it gives us the illusion of a full metropolis. In fact, I think that shows that we don’t want a Randstad at all.

The streets as a mirror of society

In many countries, the expressiveness of roads has been recognized and consciously used as a guide. The shape of the street pattern carries the ideological message and thus becomes an inseparable part of identity. A few examples from the urban planning repertoire to clarify this.

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, has become the namesake of the so-called ‘Jefferson Grid’; the immensely large grid of parcels that has divided the American territory into rectangular parcels. As a result of this, all roads were dead straight and were continued indefinitely. He wrote Jefferson’s ideal image of society in the Declaration of Independence, in which the famous phrase ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ can be found. Every American has the right to pursue happiness. The Jefferson Grid, in its democratic neutrality and infinity, shows both equality among all citizens and unlimited possibilities for all.

Now it can simply be said that the New World is a special case. That is why it is extra visual to find examples from European countries as well. It turns out that the construction of infrastructure has also been used in neighboring countries to support ideological ambitions.

In Germany in the 1930s, for example, a network of highways was built by the Nazi regime, designed by engineer Todt. Germany does not have an undisputed center, but rather a connection with the subsoil, the landscape. And so the highways do not lead to, but rather past the cities. Nazi Germany strived for an expansive empire, which included The image that emerges from the highways is of a boundlessly sloping Arcadia. Ruins, castles and rivers fit into this, but not cities that would give the country the concept of scale. To this day, this illusion is maintained. We still see a lot of greenery on the German Autobahn, on our way to our holiday in Southern Europe, but not a single city.

In France, the infrastructure has traditionally contributed to the image of Paris as the absolute center of the continent, just as all roads used to lead to Rome. To this day, we cannot drive past Paris unnoticed while traveling through France. We must and will notice through the busy Route Périphérique that, as far as the French are concerned, everything revolves around this city. We can’t ignore the city by train either. I’ve always been surprised by it, but changing trains and taking the metro is the only option when traveling from north to south. In Paris itself, the story is told through spacious boulevards that put important buildings in place. Hierarchy is an inseparable characteristic of culture. That is why churches and palaces are given the opportunity to dominate by their position in the line of sight. Conversely, power would be meaningless if the street and street walls did not exist to frame the view. An important building without the serving context of subordinate architecture would be like a general without an army. For me, the road pattern is therefore the facial expression ideology of a country – France is monumental, New York has an open character, Germany is vast.

The roads of Randstad Holland show a culture from the bottom up

Could it be that if an ideology can express itself through the pattern of roads, then conversely it would also be true that the streets can be seen that it lacks a clear vision? I would like to try it, read the Randstad through the roads. After all, there is no part of the Randstad that has not been planned or ordered, so time and again through the construction of connections, it is chosen how a specific area should relate to its surroundings and the larger whole. Just as a monumental building or an ornate bridge can symbolize the collective conviction or loner at a certain juncture, the physical appearance tells the story of our culture.

Analysis of the road structure should then, as mentioned, reveal that our country lacks an unambiguous identity or central control. The road structure could show what generations of administrators and planners have experienced; Randstad Holland is not easy to forge into a unity. There seems to be resistance to structure and decisions from above. The incredible effort it takes to carry out large-scale spatial interventions is striking. Actually, that has not been possible since the Delta Works. We have partially buried the High-Speed Line to avoid conflicts. The Betuwe cargo train line has been laid so close to the A15 that this motorway no longer leads through the landscape but runs parallel to rusting iron. In the Netherlands, a national road plan was last drawn up 50 years ago, which was subsequently not implemented. Since then, it no longer seems to be about the big picture, but about solving local problems. The interventions in the road system are often fragmentary, devoid of vision. I think of the many stretches of highway that converge at Haarlem. They ensure that this medium-sized city near the sea is now suddenly behind a tangle of roads. Think of the planned connection between the A16 and A13 near Rotterdam. These few kilometers of highway cut through the only place where the landscape borders. For me, an even bigger discovery was that our country lacks a network of connecting regional roads. Napoleon came to the Netherlands and discovered that there were hardly any roads. He therefore started with the construction of the State streets, which were later completed. Less than two centuries later, they have all been discontinued. Parts of these long lines are still visible in many places, but due to the division into pieces and the loss of traffic significance, they no longer play a significant role. This makes the Netherlands the only country in Europe without a network of provincial roads. As a result, not only have horizontal connections between the cities and villages – from church tower to church tower – disappeared, but land has also been affected. If you take the Routes Nationals instead, you imagine yourself in the real France. It is a ride through French daily life. In the Netherlands, this is no longer possible.

If we know that the development of the Randstad has not been provided by a structure from above, let alone by a vision of cohesion, where does it happen? We zoom in further and finally see that for decades the energy and dedication of designers and administrators has been concentrated on devising and realizing plans of a local scale. It is the smaller urban development plans from the bottom up that have absorbed the stormy growth. This has led to an unprecedented wealth and diversity of plans in which the state and legislation, fed by the then prevailing social views, can be read time and again. Almost all of them succeeded. Every 10 years or so according to a new design language.  from the 50s, the strongly hierarchical structure from the 60s, via the cauliflower districts in the 70s to the geometric patterns of the 80s. Until we have now arrived at the regular and straight road systems from the Vinex districts. They all seem different, but actually they always do the same thing. There is a constant in thinking. We are always looking for the right form for collectivity, in which, paradoxically, roads become as a means to limit plan developments. Seen from the inside – from motorway to ring road to collector road to neighborhood access road to residential street – aims for peace and exclusion of undesirable influences. As a result, each development stands more or less on its own.

This reveals our identity: it is not national, but can only be described on a smaller scale, that of involvement with the collective, the local group.  can thus be captured in communities of similar interests, precisely named, clearly delimited and independent. These ideals can be spatially translated into the sheltered communality of neighborhoods, districts and business areas. The Randstad has thus become a kaleidoscopic and peaceful coexistence of 1001 sub-plans without any directly identifiable mutual coherence. There is necessarily physical distance between these areas and if there is none, it is constructed by a cumbersome road structure. It is exactly what every motorist can tell the tale.

But this approach now seems to be at the limits of his abilities. At a certain point, the Randstad no longer meets our expectations, there is no other way. Our historically rooted vision of protection and control is compromised by the depletion of the landscape. Moreover, the cities are losing their autonomy because they are starting to get in each other’s way. In short, the 17th-century Ruisdaelian dreamscape, in which every neighborhood is a hamlet – clear and quiet, and if possible, adjacent to the landscape – is shattered. We don’t want Randstad, we want our peace back. Can someone take care of that?

Bouncer: where does our urge to rest come from?

I’ve always wondered. Who on earth is going to live in a swamp that is also located in a remote corner of Europe? They must have been refugees, fortune seekers and poachers. Holland as a refuge for individuals for whom the ground elsewhere became too hot. They took the unreliable subsoil for granted (or perhaps saw it as an advantage) and grouped together in places in the river delta where it was at all possible. Wouldn’t this have shaped our national character?

In any case, it would help us understand why we have little respect for the landscape between our cities. It would explain that as a rich country we accept that we live in small houses with ditto front gardens. It motivates us to be independent and to leave the curtains open in return to show that we have nothing to hide. It provides a reason to the neighborhoods that are turned inwards instead of towards the landscape. We are primarily looking for protection and peace and quiet and we find that in the clear and trust-inspiring environment of like-minded people – the residential area.

… And how do we get our peace back?

Then I am afraid that for once we have to act against our culture. If it is the case that we no longer feel free, or even threatened, then something has to be done from above. No freedom exists without the limited space within which this freedom can be exercised.

So we have to portray the openness of Randstad Holland. To make the landscape more part – to experience the emptiness, the immeasurable sea, the mighty rivers, the meadows and forests. That will be a plan from above. van de Randstad

Roads tell us where we are. So please a highway connection between Amsterdam and Rotterdam. An unprecedented panoramic experience through the Green Heart. Past Schiphol airport the meadows start and then in one movement to Paris. Conversely, instead of behind a number of cities, Amsterdam is suddenly located on a landscape with cows, church towers and windmills. With roads that give the landscape a prominent place, Randstad Holland can get some air again and its residents can feel free. With newfound openness, we can abolish the Randstad again. The Randstad didn’t belong to anyone anyway.