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Comment by raugustinus | Hacker News Reader

Because of urbanization, the paving of gardens, the water does not sink into the ground over large areas. The sewage systems are having difficulty coping with this. Because of this they're thinking about taxing the paving of gardens.

There's a municipality planning to do this starting January 2018.

https://www.gemeente.nu/ruimte-milieu/minder-groen-tuin-bete...

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Tangential, but:

I'm wondering what the ratio of tiled-over private gardens is to tiled-over public spaces (sidewalks, streets, etc.) which are omnipresent in the NL. I'd guess that the poor drainage relating to the public spaces is much greater than the poor drainage due to private tiled gardens.

I don't know about the Netherlands specifically, but in general the amount of land area devoted to public spaces is very small, albeit intensely developed, compared to residential land, which is vast and less intensely developed.

I think residences in the US and residences in Europe are quite different, and especially the Netherlands are quite densely populated. I would say that the area that's used in the US to have a driveway would work quite well in the Netherlands to have a big garden (yard).

Yeah it is quite different in the NL. Private space is much more limited compared to public space. Cities are dense, peoples' private gardens are small if they exist at all, public spaces are abundant. This isn't the land of sprawling residential space.

Sure, but streets need to be paved. Backyards not so much.

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