The core of the region is the gemeente (municipality) Amsterdam, containing the historic city, and annexations since the late 19th century. In January 2006, its population was 745 000. It has been slowly growing in the last few years, through natural increase rather than migration. In European Union states, rural-to-urban migration is largely complete, and cities often lose population by migration to the outer suburbs. When EU cities grow, it usually indicates high immigration, or a higher birth rate among immigrant minorities. The second factor is the most important in Amsterdam. The mass immigration of the 1960's and 1970's is clearly finished. However, economic growth in the late 1990's started a new immigration phase: the pattern will only become apparent when the economy recovers. The official projection is that population (gemeente) will rise to 830 000 in 2030.
Of its 400 000 households, only 15% are nuclear-family type ("couple with children"), the majority are single-person households. The economy grew until 2002, but the relative disadvantage of certain areas and minorities worsened. During the recession, unemployment increased among ethnic minorities. The national poverty survey estimates that 21% of households in Amsterdam live under the poverty line.
Planning and population
The Netherlands government exaggerates the importance and the idealism of spatial planning. The image of a fully planned landscape, which can be found even in academic publications, is false. There is certainly suburban sprawl in the Netherlands, visible on all the regional cycle routes, and usually encouraged by spatial planning. Within the Amsterdam urban region, there are typical suburbs (Nieuw Sloten, Weidevenne, Velserbroek), some 'heritage suburbs' (Weesp, Landsmeer), and older heritage urban centres (Amsterdam and Haarlem). The cheap 19th-century housing near the centre, regarded as slums in the 1960's and 1970's, has become a gentrified extension of the city centre. That leaves a large volume of interwar and early postwar housing, for instance in Amsterdam-West, which is now treated as 'ripe for clearance'.
The present a-typical population structure of Amsterdam is not simply the result of immigration. Suburbanisation, a term which is still accurate here in its 1950's meaning, is a major determinant of urban social structure. The core population of the Netherlands no longer resides in Amsterdam, or in any major urban centre. The transfer of population has reached the scale where it is appropriate to say that a new city has been built alongside the old. Depending on how you define it, the south tangent region (see Cycle Route 1) may be bigger than Amsterdam. So it is no longer true that "all kinds of people live in Amsterdam". As in other western countries the typical families "fled to the suburbs", although in a much more structured way than in the United States. This core population of 'white' families in owner-occupied suburban housing, is also the core electorate. As in other countries, they exert a disproportionate influence on national policy. The people left in the city are either "non-family" or "non-white", or are members of the ethnic Dutch underclass.
Using a revised definition, 51% of the population are of Netherlands origin in 2006. However, including illegal immigrants, the minorities are probably the majority already. Moroccans are projected to become the largest minority, with about 10%. However, by now, religion (Islam) rather than ethnicity is the social dividing line in the Netherlands. Immigration is unrelated to colonial status: Surinamese and Antillians are the only "post-colonial" minorities. Indonesia was a far larger and far more important colony than Suriname, but there was no mass migration from Indonesia, comparable to immigration to Britain from India and Pakistan. Labour migration from Turkey and Morocco is related to their status as low-income states on the periphery of Europe: they were never Dutch colonies. (Turkey was never a colony at all, but itself a core region of an empire).
Contrary to the myth, Amsterdam does not have a 'long tradition of immigration'. In reality, there were only two substantial periods of immigration:. The first was during the reformation and the 'Golden Age', roughly 1550-1675. The second began in the late 1950's and was predominantly due to labour recruitment, the phase of the Gastarbeiter. After a long period with minimal immigration, the Netherlands before the Second World War was an ethnically homogeneous society. To recreate that society would require draconian expulsions of immigrants and ethnic minorities.
There is a an official policy to alter the population composition of Amsterdam, replacing low-income households by higher-income households. Demolition and sale of older rental housing is the prime instrument to achieve this goal. Richard Florida is sometimes quoted as the ideological inspiration for this policy. This 'social cleansing' by deliberate gentrification is likely to accelerate, when the economy recovers. In Amsterdam it also means ethnic cleansing, since the low income households are the minority households. In the present xenophobic climate, there is little opposition to that: compulsory dispersal of ethnic minorities is now under serious consideration. They would probably not be resettled in prosperous white suburbs, however, but in lower-income towns in the region, such as Zaandam and Velsen.
Europe
There is some European-scale planning activity, although it is restricted by the refusal of nation states to surrender sovereign powers. On this issue the EU has no official competence, but it has produced spatial planning guidelines. At a European scale, demography is increasingly the most important factor in spatial structure. According to Eurostat, half of the EU population will be living in shrinking regions by 2025. Eastern Europe is experiencing a demographic collapse: there is a long-term shift in population distribution even without immigration. Relatively, the EU core is growing, despite nominal EU commitment to dispersed regional development. There are indications of a demographically-induced structural labour shortage in such areas. Some parts of the Amsterdam region are growing exceptionally fast by European standards. The Province of Flevoland, with the new cities Almere and Lelystad, is the fastest-growing region in the EU: 75% growth forecast 1995-2025.
In cultural influence, the surprising thing about the European context is how little it affects the region. Amsterdam Centraal Station is 90 minutes from the German border by train, 3 hours drive from northern France - but in terms of language use, Amsterdam might easily border on England. However, despite the predominance of English as a second language, Amsterdam is not a 'global city'. Global tourism should not be confused with with global centrality. Amsterdam as a tourist destination is familiar all over the world, but it does not follow that the city is a 'global node' - any more than Giza, where the pyramids are. Amsterdam has no diplomatic functions: they are all in Den Haag. Any EU or international institutions are of minor importance. Since the 1924 Olympics, Amsterdam has failed to attract any major international event - although not for want of lobbying. It is not a global financial centre either. Amsterdam is 'global', primarily in the origin points of its tourists and conference delegates.
Historical geography summary
Amsterdam is a relatively new city, by the standards of European capitals, first mentioned about 700 years ago. It is also unusual, that such a large city grew in an empty region - it was almost uninhabited until the Middle Ages. The city and its surroundings were marshland, lakes, and peat bog until about the year 1000. The present Amsterdam urban region probably had a few thousand inhabitants - perhaps only a few hundred. A tidal estuary, the river IJ, divided the region: the present North Sea Canal follows approximately its centre line. Most land is now below sea level - many reclaimed bogs sank due to agricultural use.
There is higher ground to the west and to the east. The coastal dunes (20 km west) are well above sea level, and a narrow strip behind them is also above tidal reach. Relict dunes rose slightly above sea level in some marshland, and were used for early settlements (Spaarnwoude, Cycle Route 2). In the other direction, about 20 km east, is another higher sandy ridge: the glacial end moraines of the Gooi. The landscape of the Amsterdam region itself includes three main categories: dune landscapes, reclaimed peat bog, and reclaimed lake beds.
40 km south is the river Oude Rijn, once the main channel of the Rhine delta. It flows from Wijk bij Duurstede, through Utrecht and Leiden, into the sea at Katwijk. When it was the main channel, it formed the northern boundary (limes) of the Roman empire: Utrecht and Leiden are the sites of Roman frontier forts. North of the old Rhine, in the present Amsterdam region, there was no Roman settlement - apart from a fort at Velsen. The Roman frontier did not survive as a cultural or linguistic boundary. The present language boundary is further south in Belgium - where is a major cultural and political factor. In contrast, the core area of the Netherlands is culturally homogeneous.
Utrecht was abandoned when the Roman empire collapsed, but later re-settled. In the Middle Ages it was an important bishopric, a rival of the County of Holland. Haarlem, the seat of the Counts of Holland, was the other important city in the region. (At the time the Flemish cities were the centres of economic activity in the Low Countries). Together, the former County of Holland and Bishopric of Utrecht are the heartland of the Netherlands. Their culture and language became the national culture and language, a process only completed around 1900.
Amsterdam at first was a farming and fishing village, unimportant even by local standards. It was on the south bank of the IJ estuary, which had been lined with dikes by about 1200. Where the river Amstel flowed into the estuary, a dam was built to prevent the estuary water flowing back at high tide. The houses lined the dikes near the dam: the name of the city derives directly from its origins. Zaandam, on the north bank of the estuary, is a mirror image of the location. It derives its name from a dam in the Zaan river, in exactly the same way.
Amsterdam grew slowly to a regional centre by 1500. Despite its later reputation as a cosmopolitan centre of religious tolerance, it was at that time a centre of Catholic pilgrimage, with many monasteries. Its transformation into the world's largest trading city by 1650, can not be explained by its location. The river Amstel does not lead to anywhere important - it did not become a shipping route southwards until 1825, when a small canal joined it to Rotterdam. Perhaps being in a marshy region protected Amsterdam from invasion. Otherwise there were mainly disadvantages, until the 19th century - when land reclamation and the North Sea Canal restructured the regional landscape.
During the post-Reformation wars, Antwerpen (the leading port of the Low Countries) was cut off, in 1585. Many of its trading elite fled to Amsterdam, and it became the new centre for Europe's intercontinental trade. By about 1600 Amsterdam had already eclipsed the rival cities of Holland. It was the economic centre of the whole region - with 100 000 inhabitants a European-rank city. Haarlem and Utrecht became provincial towns. Other small towns and agricultural villages were dispersed all around the region: there was no concentration of higher density at Amsterdam. In effect, the pastures started at the city gates: that did not change until about 1875.
Since 1880 urban expansion, and conversion of farm land, has expanded the residential zone over the entire region. From the coastal dunes to the Gooi ridge, and south to Leiden and Utrecht, all settlements house commuters to Amsterdam. There is no direct relationship with distance: some villages just north of Amsterdam stayed rural until the 1950's, but the Gooi region was suburbanised by 1900. By the Second World War, the possibility that Amsterdam might join up with Haarlem and Utrecht was already recognised ('ribbon development'). Planning controls have in effect delayed that for 50 years, but by now the size of the city makes the delayed 'conurbation' almost inevitable.
Maps
The spatial changes are visible in two maps. The Topografische Dienst publishes a reproduction of the 1854 military map of the region - sheet 25 at scale 1:50 000. At the same scale, the ANWB/VVV Topografische Fietskaart Amsterdam / Noord-Holland Noord, shows the region 150 years later. The map costs € 10, but the combination of topographic detail and cycling information makes this series probably the best cycling maps in the world
The 1999 Atlas Amsterdam (Bussum: Uitgeverij THOTH) is describes regional settlement and landscape history, with overview maps for the Pleistocene and the years 800; 1250; 1600; 1850; 1900; 1930; 1960; 1975; and 1990. However, the Amsterdam planning department subsidised the atlas, and some of it is historicist propaganda for its plans.
Two shorter urban routes
Nine regional routes