from wikipedia: Netherlands - Wikipedia
I can understand that a farmer may need to live in or near a polder if that’s where his land is. But given that nowadays few people are farmers, why do these 21% of the population live in the potential disaster zone and pay extra taxes to keep the dikes in repair? Are there major land price and house rent cost differences that prevent everybody from resettling in safer locations?
Twenty-one percent of the people are living in twenty-five percent of the land, so the low lands have fewer people than average and it appears people do prefer to live on relatively higher ground. As for why they live there at all, if there was enough land for everyone in the rest of the Netherlands they wouldn’t have created the low lands.
Why don’t American midwesterners move out of tornado alley? Why don’t most of the population of California move out of the earthquake zone?
Since you specified urban people, it appears that you’ve answered your own question.
A microscopic risk versus a lot of trouble of moving?
Not to mention the fact that you have a job where you are and may not have one where you go.
/Related/ Why do/did all the towns and cities along the Mississippi keep raising the levees instead of just moving away?
Take a look at the map on this wiki page to see the extent of what you’re proposing. Most of the major cities in the Netherlands are partly or totally below sea level. In fact, a major reason for why cities like Rotterdam and Amsterdam are so important is because they’re close to the sea, which was enabled international trade and the now mostly defunct Dutch “empire”. Rotterdam is still one of the main harbors in the world.
Aside from the lack of space (the Netherlands is also a major exporter of agricultural products, economically, we just can’t afford to loose all of the Randstad.
There’s very little ‘higher’ ground, and most of it isn’t very high.
Here’s a relief map of the Netherlands. See how almost the entire country is colored bluish (under sea level) and dark green (the lowest land above sea level)? Except for a couple of isolated sports there IS no higher ground. In fact, a wet season in Western Europe could flood basically all the rivers that run through the area.
Hi, I am Ton and I live near Amsterdam, well below sea-level. The answer to your question is simple, why should we? There is no real risk of flooding, it’s just in some peoples mind. We are the best protected country against high water in the world. I think living in LA is more dangerous because of the earthquake risks.
Is the North Sea rising or is the land sinking? The Rhine River deposits millions of tons of sand and mud in the delta-is the weight of this sediment depressing the land?
The Dutch government has invested billions in dikes, canals, pmping stations, etc., in an effort to keep the land dry-yet, NothEast Holland is pretty sparsely populated-why not move there?
There is very little land in east North Holland, or indeed anywhere in the two Holland provinces, which does not already have a fairly high population density, and there is none with an elevation over ten meters. In fact, in the entire Kingdom only Limburg, most of Gelderland and Noord Brabant, and a small amount each of Overijssel and Groningen, are above the ten-meter mark. Also, my impression is that the more fertile areas and the major trading centers are toward the south and west – Friesland and Groningen are not exactly backwaters, but not really able to support the population densities of the two Hollands, Utrecht, Noord Brabant, and Limburg. This map (caution: small PDF) may help.
never studied the rhine delta but from the looks of it, it’s more of a ‘bird’s foot’ delta like the mississipi rather than a ‘true’ delta like that of the nile. quite simply, a bird’s foot contains a lot of recent deposition and much of it is not ‘fast land.’ think of holland as a heavily populated chesapeake eastern shore, or a modern bangladesh.
piling up more dikes, raising land level, and filling up bays/lakes like isselmeer(sp?) can only do so much because doing that will increase the risk of floods and embayments in areas upstream (just like in bangladesh.)
what i want to ask the hollandres dopers is whether or not land in the netherlands is gradually disappearing into the sea. if so, it’s not due to a rise in sea level but more due to erosion of the delta. this problem is observed in both the nile and mississipi deltas. main culprit: dams upstream.
So why not build high-rise housing in higher areas? The Netherlands is densely populated-but mostly because the Dutch prefer single-family housing. If they built 500-unit high rises, they wouldn’t have to use the below-sealevel lands.
It would be interesting to add how much the Dutch have spent (over the centuries) of their very impressive flood control systems, and compare that with moving the population to higher ground.
If the global warming nuts are correct, the North Sea level will rise to the point that even all the dikes in the world won’t stop the Netherlands from flooding.
why don’t urban people in Ne [del]therlands[/del] w Orleans move to higher ground?
And even then, those areas aren’t automatically flood-free. The rivers in Gelderland and Overijssel don’t have large flood plains just because it looks good.
Not so. In fact some of the highest land in the Kingdom of the Netherlands is along the French border.
St. Maartin is that high an island?
