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Comment by warp | Hacker News Reader

The Netherlands is densely populated. There isn't as much space available compared to most other countries.

This is mainly the case in the cities, other area's offer more space that is similar to other countries.

Also Amsterdam is the peak of tiny spaces here. Single bedroom 25 m2, with shared toilet/kitchen for sale can cost you €100.000,- easily.

I just checked funda.nl, one of the most popular property websites, and that amount currently doesn't even buy you half that space anymore.

There is though. It's just (mainly) used for agriculture.

What? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Populati...

That blackish blob in Europe is the Netherlands.

When I am abroad, I tend to describe it as Bangladesh on the Rhine. Your map proves my point ;)

That's showing the average across the entire country - sounds a bit like the UK where average population density figures for the entire country are a bit misleading as there are substantial chunks of the country that are pretty empty:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...

Have a look on Google Maps instead. What's north of Amsterdam-North? Fields.

It's a political choice, a matter of spatial planning, to live this densly.

There’s also a big toxic waste dump that makes that area verboten for the foreseeable future https://www.volgermeer.nl/Geschiedenis/Stortplaats/

Averages are misleading when applied countrywide. Just drive through Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe etc. (all provinces) and you will get a totally different picture.

I actually just landed at Schiphol on a clear day and you can see the country just has so much sparsely populated areas peaking out the window on approach

That's on purpose. You are not allowed to build outside of the core areas. We do this because we don't want it to end up looking like Belgium.

Even Groningen (the Province) has a population density of 252, about 7 times as high as the US's average of 33.6/km2.

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