The Fascinating Human-Scale Urbanism of Dutch Suburbia

what does a suburb look like in the famously bike friendly country of the Netherlands it's one thing to inherit human scale cities built before cars even existed but what can the Dutch teach us about building sane suburbs in the modern era on our recent trip we made sure to visit some newer lower density residential developments on the edge of Amsterdam and the Hague to see just how they compare to suburbs back home in North America what we found changed our perspective on cities and urbanism and made us wonder whether the suburbs could be for us we visited lots of different neighborhoods but our footage is mainly from these four de bongard in Amsterdam Nord andracht on the western edge of Amsterdam beast land in the Southeastern edge of the Hague close to delft seon and rizwik a municipality south of the Hague also close to delft these are more or less random neighborhoods that we came across while walking biking and ferrying around as far as we know they're not special or unique they were all built in the past 30 or so years and two of them are directly adjacent to major highways what kind of urbanism does that give us these neighborhoods have population densities between five and ten thousand people per square kilometer that works out to about half or a third of the densities you'll find in central Amsterdam or the Hague but it's also double or even triple the densities you'd find in typical suburbs in Canada over the U.S one of these developments was actually advertised as rural living which is fascinating because this would be considered the lower end of urban density in most major cities in the U.S and Canada it's a pretty compelling livability balance though Urban enough to have amenities Transportation options and be a relatively efficient use of land and infrastructure spending while still providing more personal space and open space than you'd get with higher densities these four suburbs have a mix of housing from detached and semi-detached homes to Apartments mainly low rise but the basic building block of Dutch Suburbia seems to be the townhouse or Row House compare that to Canada or the US where Suburbia is heavily based on the ideal of a single-family detached home townhouses and small apartments aren't entirely rare but they're the exception to the pattern often tucked away in their own corner of the neighborhood and we will always bring this up not legally allowed to be built on most land having a variety of housing options makes neighborhoods more interesting and accessible and townhouses in particular are a sweet spot for affordability at least when built on cheaper land townhouses use less land than detached homes and they're cheaper to build than taller structures we'd never say you can't raise kids in an apartment but townhouse suburbs are a good middle ground for families with children for the mix of affordability with space in a backyard the basic idea of a suburb is that you give up proximity to the central city and in return you get more space for less money this is a normal and valid trade-off to make especially for families with children who want more room but North American suburbs often take this to the extreme mandating large decorative yards that dilute the density and contribute to sprawl without really being that useful the Dutch suburbs that we saw usually provided some form of backyard arguably the most useful of the Yards while eliminating side yards with the townhouses and having more modest space in front of the house it can be nice to have a place to sit out front but it's kind of crazy that it's the norm and even the law in lots of places to have so much empty grass out front some of the closest equivalents to front Lawns that we saw in these Dutch suburbs were more like communal courts or playgrounds which seemed great for kids easily the most unique and fascinating part of Dutch suburbs from a North American perspective is how small the roads are everyone knows to expect narrow streets in the medieval city centers but these newer developments built in the past few decades also Incorporated surprisingly small streets in a Suburban part of our city in North America a residential street might be eight to ten meters wide not including sidewalks where they exist through routes are wider but this is the norm for the smallest local streets that just provide access to homes in the Dutch suburbs that we visited residential streets are commonly half that width at just four to five meters wide from a North American perspective that is on its way to becoming a pedestrian pathway and that's kind of the point these roads provide access for cars but they slow down traffic and put the whole neighborhood at more of a walking or cycling Pace exactly what you want for an area where children are exploring and playing some of the roads through the neighborhood literally were pedestrian and cycling Pathways which are even narrower at three to four meters wide in some places these formed almost a parallel Road Network Crossing Bridges the cars aren't allowed on even when residential streets were a bit wider and closer to the norm of North America the section used for parking on the side was often set apart structurally and visibly making the street feel narrower and ensuring that the absence of parked cars wouldn't just provide more Road space for cars to drive fast if there's any one lesson we want people to take away from these suburbs it's that we can and should rethink our basic Street Network in residential areas smaller streets and pedestrian pathways are not just for medieval city centers we can also incorporate them into new residential developments and alongside bollards and other traffic calming they can do wonders to set the neighborhood at a human scale and speed how nice would it be to have a house that opened onto a bike path instead of a road that sounds awesome of course not all roads can be like this roads going in and out of the neighborhoods were a bit bigger and you could use those roads to get to arterials or highways that were much bigger and faster still even those bigger arterials consistently had adjacent bike Pathways to get you into town on top of being safer and feeling just more quaint and pleasant smaller streets are also an advantage for density they make the neighborhood more compact without taking away from anyone's personal living space imagine what these neighborhoods would look like if you doubled or tripled the width of the roads another advantage of smaller streets is maintenance one of the first things we noticed when we got back to Montreal was the awful condition of the roads you notice the bumps and potholes whether you're walking cycling driving or taking a bus there are probably multiple reasons for this in Montreal from Winters to corruption but it has to be harder to keep your roads in good condition when a residential street is twice as big as it needs to be all of these Suburban neighborhoods had some common needs located within them whether schools daycares doctors groceries or a community center you didn't have everything you needed close by like you might have in a city but it's at least an upgrade from the strictly residential neighborhoods we have in North America here in Canada having a school within a Suburban residential neighborhood is common but stores and services are usually pushed to the edge of neighborhoods or even the edge of town as you'd expect for the Netherlands all of these Suburban neighborhoods have really excellent cycling connections to nearby City centers biking to Central Amsterdam from its two Suburban neighborhoods that we looked at is easy and just as fast as driving Transit is roughly similar too for the other two suburbs between the Hague and delft if you're going to delft cycling and driving are about equal you could comfortably and safely bike to the hag too although for that trip both cycling and Transit are quite a bit slower than driving there is a tram going between the Hague and delft through some Countryside in lower density areas but it doesn't cover these particular neighborhoods overall there are definitely some trips that are faster or more convenient by car but it depends a lot on where you're going with cycling and Transit being competitive or even faster for many trips too all of the suburbs we saw had car parking but they tend to have it behind the buildings and they communal Lots instead of a front driveway and garage for every single building this probably saves space and definitely looks nicer we talked to someone in one of these townhouse suburbs in another Dutch City and they said that most of their neighbors have one car per household rather than the two car households that are pretty common in North America we've covered what these homes and neighborhoods look like in a general sense from the outside but let's take a look at some specific homes you can get and how much they cost the Netherlands is overall one of the more expensive countries in Europe for housing so whether these suburbs seem affordable to you will depend a lot on how crazy the housing market is in your current city into bangard in Amsterdam Nord we found a four bedroom Corner House built in 2008 for 685 000 Euros a corner house here means that it's one-fourth of a four home building this one has three floors plus a rooftop patio for 144 square meters or 1600 square feet of livable space it has a one-car garage on the first floor and seems to have a second parking space in a nearby lot in andract on the western edge of Amsterdam we found a more affordable three-bedroom townhouse for four hundred thousand Euros built in 1990 it has 96 square meters or one thousand square feet of living space across three floors although the third floor is a smaller furnished attic this home has a small front yard or porch area and a larger backyard in beast land on the Southeastern end of the Hague we found a five-bedroom luxury Villa with 276 square meters or three thousand square feet of livable space for 1.3 million euros we also found a more modest three-bedroom townhouse built in 2003 with a nice patio overlooking the water and 109 square meters or 1200 square feet of living space for 375 000 Euros incione Northwest of delft we found a four-bedroom townhouse built in 2016 for 620 000 Euros that opens on to a pedestrian court and has a backyard nearby in a similar neighborhood across the road you can get a just built one-bedroom apartment with 48 square meters or 520 square feet of living space plus a nice backyard for 300 000 Euros in North America there's a frustrating assumption that density bike infrastructure public transit pedestrian spaces and other things we talk about on this channel are for big city downtowns where young professionals live in small apartments for easy access to work and social events while sprawling car Centric suburbs are the natural and obvious environment for families with children the Dutch suburbs that we visited blur the lines showing that you can have three or four bedroom homes built reasonably compactly you can have a backyard while living close enough to school for your kid to walk you can have a parking spot or even a garage as well as safe streets and you can get out of the city while still having a world-class cycling Network visiting Dutch suburbs actually made us question whether we consider ourselves big city people we like things like bike infrastructure and medium density housing and in North America that generally means living in a central neighborhood of a bigger city like Montreal or Philadelphia in the Netherlands these things are available in a lot more places even though we live in Central Montreal if we were to live in the Netherlands we probably wouldn't choose Central Amsterdam we'd probably go for a more suburban area or even more likely a smaller City like Utrecht or Harlem [Music]

Channel: Oh The Urbanity!

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Id: nImFJ7KKjAo

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 25 2023