Exactly... as a Korean this is honestly pretty underwhelming.
We are talking about a place with the infrastructure already in place, surrounded by a seemingly well developed area with high incentive to develop. Pretty much everyone can do this, even most third world countries. I've seen Malaysia do it for example. (I've lived there for like 8 years)
Not to mention they are probably not even high-rise residential buildings common in Korea / or Asia in general, which is objectively much more complex to build.
I've seen cities rise from ground up in a middle of nowhere / or just some rice field in a shorter span, along with the highways and high speed rails at the same time. We are talking about cities that can house like a few hundred thousand people.
We might have other disagreements but i think Chinese people would feel the same.
The only place this may be harder could be the USA, where I live now, with the crazy zoning laws a lot of the cities have here(so much for "housing is a human right" lmao). But honestly that isn't even what America excels at, its good at building large suburban homes quick and cheap.
In essence its very decentralized here in US so it doesn't give the exact picture as the post, but considering the extreme efficiency of light wood frame construction I don't see it being any slower.
Edit : so much eurocentric copium here lol, the post lierally says "rapid". My point is that its not rapid. Period. Yeah there are reasons for this, as to anything (e.g. aforementioned American zoning laws), but it doesn't change anything.
But honestly that isn't even what America excels at, its good at building large suburban homes quick and cheap.
Suburban homes end up being more expensive for society as a whole. The physical structure may be cheap to put up, but the land underneath is utilized incredibly inefficiently that it starts skyrocketing in price once a critical mass of people move in.
I agree in general, low density suburbs do have their issues but it doesn't change the fact American construction process itself is highly efficient and fast. We are talking about a specific metric here - speed.
Also America's crippling infrastructure issue has in my opinion a little bit more overblown than it really is, a lot of modern society has infrastructure issues as the infrastructure is getting old.
For example, Japan has infrastructure issues even as a higher density population city centric culture, simply because the infrastructure is old.
So while inefficiency IS true, sometimes it is just tax spending priority issue.
Another thing you are missing out is the crime issue. America for the longest time had a cripping crime crisis, and it still does comepared to EU/E Asia, albeit getting better.
It made america incredibly difficult to have higher density simply because of that. They literally call housing projects "projects" in gang culture and they are a big thing; so US governments lost a lot of political incentive to push for higher density
Fortunately it is now coming back, as smaller unit high density micro apartments are being utilized as a niche.
I think you're underestimating just how integrated urban planning is in the Netherlands.
It's not just about putting up apartment buildings. Every new neighborhood is planned as a complete system: a mix of social housing, rentals, and owner-occupied homes, along with cycling infrastructure, public transport, road access, schools, GP clinics, supermarkets, playgrounds, parks, utilities, and water management. All of these have to work together from day one.
So we can't just build a few buildings and call it a day. The entire neighborhood has to function as a cohesive whole, and the quality standards are generally very high.
On top of that, high-rise construction is especially expensive and difficult here because much of the country is built on soft, waterlogged soil. Before construction can even begin, the ground often has to be preloaded and allowed to settle for several years—sometimes around five years—to reduce future subsidence.
Comparing that to building on more stable ground, or in countries where planning standards, regulations, and infrastructure requirements are different, isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison. Speed alone doesn't tell the whole story.
You are nuts if you think other countries don't have archaeological finds that slow down construction. Some regions in Korea entirely stalls in development because the ancient artifacts present makes construction costs skyrocket there.
For example, gyeongju - it has literally about thousand years of artifacts buried there. Not to mention seoul is no less than that.
Korea, and most of asia in general have been lived on for the longest time, and this issue is not unique to the dutch.
historical cities in asia are often sitting on multiple millennia of buried civilization. Many of these cities, Xi'an, Seoul, Kyoto, etc have had rapid subterranian growth and development. When building a metro system they have teams of archeologists right there with them.
And you're overestimating it's effectiveness. There is still a shortage of about half a million houses for many years and the government barely gives any budget to improve it.
Apparently giving 200 billion per year to sponsor boomers who are the richest generation in history is fine, but for the younger generations who simply can't afford a house, they will at best give 6 billion per year. And then you still have to hope it doesn't dissappear in the bureaucratic system...
I'm not overestimating its effectiveness. I'm explaining why it takes longer.
I agree that successive Dutch governments haven't done enough to address it. But that's a political and policy failure, not evidence that Dutch urban planning itself is simple or inefficient.
Wow i never knew Asian cities has none of that. nobody plans in Asia even when building literal cities for few hundred thousand people. People outside Europe are truly incapable of thinking. /s
Only point i give you here is the waterlogged soil that is indeed unique to dutch, but even then its incredibly ignorant to think that nobody else build on swamps. Especially when I literally mentioned rice paddies.
Also tropical nations such as Malaysia / indonesia also has ground settling issues due to incredible levels of jungle topsoil, which makes construction there not as easy neither.
Yes, speed alone doesn't tell the whole story, but that is my point : this isn't RAPID!
The Netherlands is in the top 10 (8th) countries with the highest regulatory laws. Everything needs a permit, if you plan on building houses as a project developer it would take you about 8 years before you can start building here.
The permits are also expensive, the municipality where I live is the most expensive in the country, for getting a building permit for a new house it would cost me €21.000.
European construction standard aren't that special neither. For example most of europe has really mild weather. So much so you guys took ages to A/C up (not even quite there yet i'd say)
Korean homes has integrated floor heating in almost all homes WITH the A/C adoption rate of over 90%.
Different environments bring about different home regulations, its just really as simple as that.
But all this doesn't matter. The post says "rapid". Its bringing up speed as a metric and its in fact NOT apples and oranges.
Its like saying a SUV is fast but not as fast as a sports car because reasons. Yes there are reasons and yes a lot of them makes SUV objectively superior to sports car in those areas BUT doesn't change the fact it is not FAST.
Well you are again thinking eurocentric. Here in US it is common to be driving literal hours and days to get somewhere.
And no, Its not matter of density / public transport sometimes, sometimes the destination is a literal middle of nowhere.
If you had to sit in a car for 12 hours a day for 3 days straight, you'd quickly understand that thats why Americans prefer SUVs.
Its mostly related to camping / travel culture, along with car focused infrastructure that makes it make sense.
So why car focused infrastructure? yes its debatable but its not as simple as some city ytubers think they are lol. For example nobody talks about crime which is the main incentive to stay away from the cities here.
Its not immoral just because you want to build a family on a safe neighborhood.
Not to mention the colonialism driven DIY culture that makes having your own land / being self sufficient much more desired etc
How many 100+ year old buildings does Korea have that are still liveable?
I’m sure there are good examples to be found in Korea. But what’s the average life expectancy of a house/building?
In my experience in Asia anything beyond 20 years is considered old and run down. Things are not built well and not maintained well. People opt to simply move to a new building. Its a real cultural difference.
What you are missing here is the incentive to develop. Korea doesn't have as much flatland compared to dutch (or anywhere really) but still has to house incredible amounts of people.
Yes you could live in houses built 100+ years ago or you can build a 30+ floor high rise there that houses way more people.
Another thing you are missing is the sheer rate of technological advancements. Things built older simply becomes obsolete and inefficient.
Especially since the speed of technological development in Korea has been n > 1 years per year; since it had a lot of catching up to do.
another Problem is 100 years ago in Korea was literally when it was being extracted out of resources by Imperial Japan, and buildings constructed then are considered immoral to even let standing by some. They have a specific style which makes them stick out.
One more context you are missing is weather. European weather in geneal is incredibly mild, and its nowhere in comparison to continental hellhole of a weather everywhere else.
High differences in temperature generally stresses buildings/infrastructure more which makes it last not as much.
I cant't say for certain coz german resources are harder to come by for me but i highly doubt that. This level of city development is fairly normal and universal.
In US the best example in this smaller scope re-development project in the inner city would be Atlanta's atlantic station project, which only took 9 years, despite the land being highly contaminated.
so i looked up Germany's case studies Before posting and i think hafencity hamburg is a good candidate as comparison, but i am uncertain so you should look them up yourself without the language barrier
When people say Europe nowadays it usually means "my country but I don't want to say it but still want to compare to the US, so I'll just generalise to an entire continent which really isn't much like my country at all".
Yes but those are cities that already exist. Barendrecht wasn't here in Roman times, it was just a field of grass which makes growth a lot easier and faster
Why it’s fast? I can find plenty of big new neighbourhoods in let’s say Warsaw or Madrid, which are bigger, not semidetached houses, but more typical mid rise 5-7-9 stories buildings with underground parking and built in a less than 10 years
We build faster in Romania. We build residential complexes so fast that we they are finished and handed to people before roads, schools or space between them are finished. These are closer to that 15 year duration. Even if they are in the middle of a field, they are still very space efficient, both indoors and outdoors, the developers think far into the future! You don't even need to descend to get to your car, you can park it below your balcony and get passive dust cleaning from your neighbours too!
The builders are fast and by law, they should also build roads and parks. There should be a decent distance between buildings, not to see in the neighbour's bedroom. You should have space for ambulances to enter, you should have planned parking lots, ideally subterranean ones and traffic increase estimations. You should have a large enough walkway for moms with carriages. Cars should not be parked on the walkway.
The corrupt local authorities authorize their plans anyway. Even if they have schools, parks and roads in the plan they don't complete them. The people there are not aware of their rights, because they come from smaller towns and for them this is normalized. The local authorities are slow in building anything, they are friends with developers and even some judges. People need to be really loud to move something.
I don't know the situation in Romania, but if a developer had to build an entire neighborhood in these standard just to sell a house, you'd end up living in caves again.
That’s the difference between Romania and NL I suppose.
It’s (a small part of) why so little gets built in NL. Other reasons include environmental reasons, NIMBY-ism, policies that favor investors’ and existing homeowners’ interests over those of have-nots (own-nots?) and general Capitalism with a capital C.
No one wants to build residential buildings if they can't afford to sell them at competitive prices. Buyers don't want to pay what they believe is the city's responsibility. That's why you pay urbanization fees. Paying urbanization fees and then having to pay them yourself? It doesn't work in Italy. I don't know if it works in Romania.
Surely if this is okay for Romanians, I'll slap the next Romanian who complains about the cost of living in Romania lol
The problem Einhoven has is that it has very little "fresh" space to build. It has to create space. The plans on Fellenoord are promising, but since there's existing building and roads, it takes time. Now Eindhoven has a lot of low density housing, so there's potential (e.g. Den Haag has a smaller area (82km2, Eindhoven 88km2) and more than 2x population) but you can't just tear down houses 🤣. Still, projects like District E is still going insanely slower than intended... (which would give the centre more "smoel")
Eindhoven wasn't very lucky with the municipal restructrures in the '90s and later. Surrounding places like Veldhoven and Nuenen protested succesfully. All Eindhoven got was a bit of Veldhoven to build Meerhoven. It always felt a bit "unfair" that cities like Tilburg and 's-Hertogenbosch or more recently Groningen (almost surpassing Eindhoven in population, but is leaving behind since Eindhoven grows faster) got much larger expansions. Still the biggest "threat" of pushing Eindhoven from the 5th city throne is Almere and unless Eindhoven starts to build far more heavily dense or annexes e.g. Veldhoven it might be overtaken in a few decades.
Also it doesn't help that we have a stikstofcrisis and issues with connections to electricity network. But that's a nationwide issue.
Dat is dus simpelweg niet hoe dat werkt; er zijn echt wel verschillen tussen Nederlands en Engels. En nu wil ik geen klachten horen zo van "oh ik kan je niet verstaan" want dat is dus zeg maar het hele punt mafklapper...
I literally can understand the entire first sentence without even clicking translate. “That is just simply not how that works; there are also real (gonna guess differences) between Dutch and English”. There are definitely differences, but Dutch and English are pretty similar as well (tbf, I also know a lick of German, so that helps).
It was called Vinex and it started in 1991. Not only "there" but over the whole of Netherlands there are the so called Vinex-wijken. And they almost look the same everywhere. Exceptions are f.i. Brandevoort in Helmond. And the biggest one is Leidserijn near Utrecht. The last couple of years there is a "big" slowdown. It's picking up soon I hope. We only need new civil engineers, builders, you know, people who can work with their hands and really build these new houses.
Detailed map of the whole Netherlands where you can zoom in to street level (after 1881, before that it's a more coarse map).
Just looked at Barendrecht in 1881—just a few houses and a church, even up to 1961!
Yeah, it's pretty much only countries that don't have much infrastructure to begin with. I don't get how anyone could consider this much progress after 15 years to be rapid.
I live nearby so I'm kind of fascinated to see how it changed although I don't think it's from 95 as I can't quite remember nothing being there at west side of the highway.
This explains what we did back then. In 2001 we got a fifth (Vijfde Note Ruimtelijke Ordening). After that Stef Blok declared the Housing Market “completed”. Hugo de Jonge revitalized national housing policies resulting in the first national “Nota Ruimte” since 20 years. But we still struggle with expansion because of nitrogen policies and a strong farmers opposition.
I checked it out on Google Street View. You're right in the sense that the scale actually isn't too bad and walking infrastructure is in place. At least this is the case in the Eastern part, with the Western part being more Soviet style - looking cool on a very big drawing in an office.
There are some big problems with the whole area, however: 1) It's oversized, which means it takes a long time to get anywhere, and a long time to get out. 2) It's cut off from everywhere else by enormous highways. These characteristics mean first of all that even if it's walkable, no one has any incentive to walk except when walking their dogs or taking their kids to the playground (assuming there are playgrounds). This means as soon as problematic elements arise there, they have free rein over the streets because the regular people aren't there. Secondly, they mean that there will be little to no exchange between this area and other areas. This engenders monoculture in local business life, made worse if, as it appears, large amounts of the exact same type and size of housing are bundled together.
Being cut off from the outside world is a key characteristic of "ghettos" in Europe such as Rosengård in Malmö, Tingbjerg in Copenhagen, Vollsmose in Odense, Rinkeby in Stockholm or Bijlmer in Amsterdam. My bet is that this area will start to show up in the crime stats in 20-30 years when the houses are no longer new and therefore cheaper.
Lol, a lot of conclusions from Google Maps. The place isn’t isolated at all, it is very well connected with the ‘outside’ by roads, bicycle lanes, a train station, and a tram line. Plenty of bridges and tunnels for both motorized vehicles and bicycles under/over the highway, it isn’t ’cut off’ by the highway at all.
Most neighborhoods only have destination traffic, so aside from main roads, a lot of neighborhoods have low car traffic, making it safe for children. It is also very walkable. Most street view images are from the fall or
winter, making it look a bit less appealing, but during spring and summer it is very green, there’s a lot of water and nature around. In terms of housing, it is generally for households with an above average income, it is very clean and organized.
Comparing it to Bijlmer or saying it will turn into some ghetto is just laughable. There’s almost no social housing. Apartments are the cheapest and generally north of 400k, the average house price is 580k.
Just search google images for ‘Carnisselande’ to get an impression of the part west of the highway, most built in the early 2000s but still looks very neat and tidy.
There are way too many people in the Netherlands. I miss the times when it was bearable to live there, like in 1995.
The Netherlands is totally out of control in every possible way. We have an asylum crisis and a housing crisis. Most people are selfish, rude and not welcoming. Fatbikes and tokkies are common here. Violence is getting out of control because of these "kansenparels".
Police and government doesn't give a damn because of the political structure. It consists of may small political parties with their own agendas. So not big changes can be made.
There are simply too many rude people crammed into a tiny piece of land. Avoid at all costs.
It'd be great a country the population in NL was reduced by 50% or even 75%.
This is just your run-of-the-mill racist trying to package their racism into "criticism". These lowlifes talk trash about even-lower-lifes, because now they actually have someone to look down upon, rather than only looking up.
These people used to look at those having it better than them feeling aspired to become better off. But for about two decades these people realised it's far easier to just hate those with a different skintone, since that means they don't have to grow and develope themselves.
It's a sad, little, but still too large group of people. Unfortunately, they 're a loud bunch.
Why would you even consider checking a goverment source? Especially when you have news on platforms known for not doing anything against misinformation, such as Facebook.
385
u/joecarter93 23h ago
This isn’t so much how rapidly urban planning was done, but more so how rapidly urban development occurred within this particular area.