So is the largest contributor to the problem just lack of land? Seems like most of the other problems from the article can be solved with money, but a lack of land makes it hard to build anything
It doesn’t help, but there are a few factors that are more limiting right now. Labour shortage is one, as are nitrogen emissions. A lot of developers also find the current building costs too high.
There are plenty of plots that can be built on, with all of the paperwork good to go.
I think the three biggest contributors are:
- immigration
- nitrogen crisis not allowing to have as many houses built as we need
- seniors living at home longer instead of going to a nursing home
The biggest contributor is the massive amounts of land being used for producing meat, which is then exported to other countries
map of land usage in the netherlands
See those red dots? Thats where people live. See the vast vast light green background? Thats agrictulture.
Nope, our spoil isn’t dense enough for it. We cannot build higher then what you see in Rotterdam, because the building would just fall over
I once calculated that if we reduce the land use for livestock by 50% and then use 10% of the newly freed land to build housing (the other 40% can become nature), we can build a city something like 1.5x times the size of Amsterdam, the largest city in the Netherlands.
It’s not a lack of land. It’s how the land is being used. Almost half is for livestock (or more accurate: to dump the shit of that livestock, as the majority of the animals is kept indoors).
Is the land the livestock are currently using capable of supporting dense housing and is it close to urban cores. Or would you just build sky scrapers in the middle of nowhere, because China tried that and it failed.
Anything in the Netherlands is close to an urban core.
They also have centuries of experience on building on lands that shouldn’t be capable of supporting dense housing. Amsterdam used to be a literal swamp as well (I’m not making any statements on its current status).
The Netherlands exports an enormous amount of meat currently. It’s the largest exporter of meat of any EU country. They export 60% of the meat they produce. So yeah, they would be fine.
The Netherlands is currently really suffering from nitrogen pollution, in a big part because of the meat industry. So it would also be a great improvement for the environment to reduce the meat production.
Having such a big part of the European meat production localized in one of the most populated regions in the EU is just a recipe for disaster.
Give this a watch, we most certainly do not lack land.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B8kyrIQCFXQ
Tldr: France could house the entire world in sustainable housing.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=B8kyrIQCFXQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
