Dutch towns and cities have always occupied a very important place in the study of urbanization. So an Atlas of the Dutch Urban Landscape is a particularly valuable contribution to the field of urban history, synthesizing as it does a wealth of local historical and academic studies that brings important studies in Dutch to bear on the urban variable.
Rutte and Abrahmse, ably assisted by a cartographic team and a wider group authors, break the volume into two sections. Part I deals with 35 individual Dutch towns from the eleventh to the twenty-first century. The team's stated objectives are to describe, analyse and compare the historical development of Dutch towns over a thousand years. The methodology is based on four principles: what was actually built, and when; coverage throughout the Netherlands, excluding what became Belgium; a consistent set of recording principles to present urban change; and finally, facilitated by this consistency, a comparative study of Dutch urban history over the long term.
The selection of 35 towns is based on the largest urban centres in 2010 with a threshold population of 80,000 inhabitants. By choosing a modern point of reference, the team defined a fixed boundary for their studies, and though they make light of it, this enables clusters of medieval or early modern villages to be included as they mutated into larger urban entities. Similarly, suburban developments swallowed up by twentieth-century municipalities could be included.
The 35 towns are presented in alphabetical order – so no implicit urban hierarchy is assumed. The intellectual approach might reasonably be considered as a modern version of town plan analysis with physical, morphological, and archaeological studies underpinning the text. The editors unapologetically note that ‘the image is paramount; the text its explanation’ (p. 8). Accordingly, each case-study, regardless of its size and population, comprises common components: a map showing the town's chronological development of the built up area over the course of AD 1200–2010; an outline map identifying the core factors in the town's developmental process; a Google Earth map with key local features identified; a timeline noting the most important periods of development; and two images, often a painting or aerial photograph, intended to convey something of the character of the town – the feel of the place. In addition, there is a thumbnail image to locate each town within the Netherlands, a select bibliography and approximately 1,500 words of text in each four-page spread, irrespective of the extent and size of the urban unit.
The generous large-format (250 x 345mm) and consistent approach is appealing. No squinting at reduced scale maps or illustrations is required. Quickly, the reader obtains a sense of place, scale and historical change. Periods of pre-urban development, town formation and expansion, stagnation, revival and growth spurts are identified in a timeline for each place. The full colour images are of outstanding quality. Individual towns have a ready-made, expertly presented potted history that is perfect for visitors, web-sites and other promotional purposes and the Director of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, University of Delft, and the publishers are to be congratulated on their sponsorship and vision. For Dutch local historians and school children, the entry for their town is an excellent underpinning to any project or study that they might undertake. Research capacity, tourism and local interest are stimulated as a result – there is also a Dutch language edition. Perhaps in recognition of this infrastructural investment that the research represents, the Foreword by Carola Hein includes a suggestion that the Committee of the European Historic Towns Atlas might adopt a similar approach in other countries as one of its initiatives.
With Part I entirely devoted to case-studies of 35 individual towns and cities, Part II embarks on the comparative. A map of the Netherlands shows each of the 35 places as a circle proportionate to their population in 2010. Useful, but more impressive on the facing page, is the relationship between the physical character of the land and the timing of the foundation of towns. So marine and river clays, peat, sand, polders and other types of landscapes and soil types are mapped in relation to periods of town foundation. This is a revealing, and visually appealing, map and is developed further (p. 174) with the relationship between soil types and town foundations, specifically of ports and landlord-sponsored late medieval new towns.
A timeline analysis is presented on a double-page spread and summarizes the comparative trajectory of development. At a glance, the reader can see that, though founded at about the same time, the prosperity of The Hague and Rotterdam is arrested in the mid-fifteenth century while that of Amsterdam continued until the end of the sixteenth century when all three enjoyed the prosperity of the Dutch ‘Golden Age’. While this is well known to urban historians, the ability to compare, say, periods of stagnation in Breda, Zwolle, ‘s-Hertogenbosch and Leeuwarden is not, and as long as it is recognized that the periods are not crisply defined by dates, and rather are indicative of periods, then this is a particularly helpful mode of comparative urban analysis. It also suggests some parallels and inconsistencies between towns that warrant further research.
Comparative analysis is also based on an urban typology: oldest towns; second-generation towns; the ‘big three’ (Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague) industrial towns and residential towns. The urban footprint of each place in each category is intriguing, with building development identified and mapped in five historical stages. Detailed comparative attention is devoted to the urban morphology of towns through an analysis of the parcels of plots that shaped the distinctive street patterns in the various towns. An analytical frame that includes soil types is never far removed from a basis of urban development closely related to water courses and this broadens into mapping the locations of town defences and dykes, passenger barge routes and the political and administrative geography associated with the topography. There are revealing maps of the town extensions in the 1850–1950 period, and also in the 1950–2010 years, and these are accompanied by illustrations of the plans and architectural features that influenced urban textures. Finally, the comparative dimension broadens in Part II to international perspectives with the Dutch experience mapped in relation to the estimated populations of European cities between AD 200 and 2000. Much of this section will be familiar to urban historians though the graph illustrating the march of urbanization into medieval central Europe is a useful general reminder of the wider European context.
The Atlas of the Dutch Urban Landscape is a large-format, full-colour, high-quality product, both physically – as can be expected from Thoth – and intellectually. The focus is unambiguously on the physical dimensions of urban development with the transitions in the built environment heavily influenced by features in the natural environment. There will be those who wish to know more of the spatial elements of political organizations, societies, memberships and the wider social and cultural drivers of Dutch urban development. Perhaps that is volume II.
The book is innovative in its digital underpinnings. It is inter-disciplinary in that it brings many spatial perspectives to enrich historical understanding. It is concerned with networks and systems, and provides a genuinely comparative approach as a result. The Atlas of the Dutch Urban Landscape provides a springboard for further studies, both within and beyond the Netherlands, demonstrates an everyday relevance in terms of planning and is a tool for classroom education. In all these senses, and especially in an academic dimension, the Atlas of the Dutch Urban Landscape makes a significant contribution to the spatial perspectives of urban history.
