The Netherlands is a Giant City

The Netherlands has a secret about its structure and design. Today we will reveal this secret.

fern is a joint venture by:

Music:

Artlist:

Alon Peretz - Song for Heather
idokay - Chevalet
Maya Belsitzman & Matan Ephrat - Once Upon a Time
Yehezkel Raz - Flight of the Inner Bird - Instrumental Version

EpidemicSound:
Etienne Roussel - Growing Tall
Philip Ayers - Hybrid Organism
Eden Avery - Montage of a Map
Sindrandi - Nuna
Trevor Kowalski - Rest Upon the Edge
Silver Maple - We Are Giants

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Armchair documentaries, almost weekly

[theninjabird]

As one of three people that live in Monaco I have to say we are not a real country, you got us

[NiAlBlack]

My takeaway from this video is that New York City's urban area as well as other urban areas in the USA should be built more like the Netherlands.

[lesumsi]

I think the story of Urk & Burk is great summary of Dutch history. This should become a full-length movie.

[EenGamer.]

As someone who has cycled across the whole country in 1 day, I can confirm its mostly fields.

[markuserikssen]

If you talk about The Randstad, it's perhaps one big city region, but once you get out there, it's definitely not like that everywhere. Here in the north, we have way too much space between cities and towns for it to be called a giant city. In that way, we are just a country with some very dense populated regions.

[CkBr]

Most of the Netherlands isn't 'actually a giant city', and yet infrastructure outside of de Randstad, is still excellent. It isn't just the city aspect of the Netherlands that creates good infrastructure, its also government regulation. I feel like you should have at least mentioned that.

[tatyboy]

The difference imo is that it is done so well - it's planned to be like this.

England could have Manchester&Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, and London connected in a similar way. but instead we have London and everything else.

[am]

I cannot believe I didn't realise you were Dutch until you pronounced 'Randstad', your (American) accent is seriously impressive

[ArturoStojanoff]

I love the Urk and Burk section as a linguist. People are often confused as to how it is that languages get simpler over time, yet they still haven't all collapsed into the most simple they could be. Also they wonder why languages wouldn't just tend towards more simplicity, as it is much easier to learn, and anyone who has to learn the complicated grammar rules of a foreign language can attest to the fact that simplifying things would be great for learners.
But that section shows how simpler grammar, with fewer specific features designed to organize and classify information makes it harder to understand language, so it makes sense languages would not tend towards the most simplicity, but instead towards a balance of simplicity and complexity, since a simpler language is easier to learn, but a more specific language is easier to understand once you've already learned it.
And the Urk and Burk section shows this in how it was actually harder to understand than if you'd use normal English grammar.

[-haclong]

N.Y.C. is actually a giant city, the Randstad isn't interconnected enough to be comparable. As someone who has lived in both I can see that N.Y.C. is actually a concrete jungle while the Randstad is the opposite of N.Y.C.

While Central Park is the sole exception to the large urban landscape of New York, the high rise districts in the Randstad are the exceptions surrounded by lots of rural land. If you travel from The Hague to Leiden you'll find lots of farnland with cows.

[Ninjaeule]

As someone who lives near Frankfurt and is currently staying in Helsinki (two metropolitan areas), I have to say this: Higher density leads to higher density if you let it. Real-life lore has a video series called Curious Population Patterns (Why x Country is y% empty). While geography plays into the makeup of a nation, there are limits to geographic determinism. The way people interact with geography is far more important. Places in the US could be much nicer if they hadn't decided on Euclidian zoning, but they did. Of course, high density leads to worse air quality if we continue to burn fossil fuels (or wood). That's not the fault of density that's caused by burning stuff. Having high density in some places and low density in the rest could actually make dealing with problems like Climate change easier. In the high-density areas, get rid of fossil fuel-powered vehicles and connect buildings to heat networks. Use the low-density regions to generate renewable energy and food to power the high-density ones.

[mariusfacktor]

The Netherlands is the #2 country in the world in food exports, behind the United States. A city can't do that. The Netherlands is small but has good land-use while most other countries have egregious land-use. That's why the Netherlands can offer amazing amenities and services.

[m_a_e_x]

I love the blender shots. It's really nice to see the underlying software and to give others a little bit of understanding how this kind of video is produced.
10/10 please add more random blender insights in your videos from now on.

[Alacernovum]

And even though the Randstad is pretty dense, go the het Groene Hart (the Green Heart) and you'll find towns and villages just like in the rest of the Netherlands, but right in the middle of the Randstad.
We Dutch complain a lot about everything in our country, yet no one argues our planning skills.

[LinusKuehl]

I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here --- the Netherlands isn't the only dense place in the world. For instance, the comparison to New York State isn't an argument for why what's been done in the Netherlands can only be done there. New York is also densely populated.. so why couldn't similar infrastructure be built there?

It also ignores that, even if a large area is not densely populated, cities very much still tend to be. Meaning that also in places that aren't densely populated, it doesn't mean that the cities and town in that place can't afford to build better infrastructure. Sure, you can attribute the Netherland's rail infrastructure to its large-scale density, but nobody is using their bike to go from Amsterdam to Enschede. So why couldn't any other city still do as good of a job building infrastructure for short-distance trips that don't leave the city?

[xdmelone]

Build a city like New York the way Randstad is built then. The fact that Randstad is technecally an area with cities instead of a city with districts, doesn't change the fact that it is functionally the same. City infrastructure in many cities (for example the US) could be like Randstad instead of the way it currently is. Sure, connection between those cities is a different story that the Netherlands don't have, but that could probably be solved by high speed trains between the cities. For the minority living outside of these clusters, there can still be cars. Cars as main transportation inside cities and their direct surroundings is just ineffective and stupid.

[thijmstickman]

You should have mentioned that the reason that it is this way is that the government had pretty strict urban growth boundries to make sure that the cities became dense instead of sprawling out, in order to preserve the very valuable farmland. The Randstad isn't one big city, because in between the cities is the green heart, which is basically just farmland

[AlRoderick]

Switzerland is in many ways completely the opposite of the Netherlands, but it is also a good place to live with good public transit and a high standard of living. So I clearly there's more than one answer and any individual region of the United States could probably figure out how to be more like one or the other. I live in Michigan and I always figured we'd have a better time trying to emulate Swiss urbanism than Dutch.

[dondr]

0:24 Funny fact is, that New York was founded by the Dutch. Plus New Netherlands was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the east coast of what is now the United States, including New York (New Amsterdam).

[udishomer]

This pattern of large dense urban areas is common in many countries, yet the Netherlands stands out with its exceptional infrastructure, urban planning and land use.

This video is either meant to make Americans feel better about themselves, or to create controversy (which improve viewership and engagement).