2. Case study: Almere
2. Case study: Almere
Flexible planning - From state-led new town to citizen-driven development
2.1 Headlines
Location
Almere, Netherlands, Europe
Key dates
- 1970s - Almere established on reclaimed land as part of the Dutch new towns programme
- 1984 - Municipality of Almere formally founded
- 2000s - Introduction of self-build and citizen-led planning models (e.g. Homeruskwartier, Oosterwold)
- 2020–2021 - Adoption of Almere’s first Urban Food Strategy
Key features
A large-scale, sustainability-led new town built on reclaimed land close to Amsterdam, characterised by a polycentric urban structure, integrated green-blue networks, strong public transport connectivity and innovative citizen-led self-build and food initiatives.
Key lessons
- Almere demonstrates how water management, biodiversity and public space can be integrated as the backbone of urban form. Embedding green-blue networks from the outset enhances resilience, liveability and climate adaptation in new settlements.
- Almere shows how it is possible to integrate food space using food strategies and planning instruments to support an ‘edible’ placemaking approach, especially on the town’s urban edges.
- Early investment in high-quality public transport and active travel networks has enabled Almere to achieve strong internal walkability, cycling accessibility and regional connectivity.
- Almere’s self-build and citizen-led approaches have allowed for diversity in design, experimentation and a strong sense of place identity and ownership by residents. Policy makers elsewhere could encourage similar models. Almere’s success reflects the importance of empowering local authorities so they receive clear development mandates, with a consistent national policy direction that supports new towns.
- Elsewhere, this could translate as the introduction of development corporations or similar mechanisms to consolidate land ownership, deliver housing and infrastructure, and provide long-term supervision of urban development.
Key recommendations
- Use development corporation or similar models to manage land ownership, planning, and to oversee stewardship arrangements.
- Embed green-blue and food infrastructure frameworks and strategies as core components of masterplanning a new town, ensuring mixed land uses in landscapes that have multiple functions and address climate resilience, biodiversity and wellbeing.
- Adopt a public transport-first approach to planning, prioritising early provision of sustainable mobility and active travel networks and regional public transport connectivity.
- Support community-led and self-build planning initiatives, including those which are food related, within new developments as can be beneficial in establishing a sense of community and strengthening liveable placemaking.
2.2 Overview
Almere is a new town located in the province of Flevoland in the Netherlands, approximately 20km east of Amsterdam. Established in the 1970s on land reclaimed from an inland sea, Almere was designed to relieve housing shortages in the Randstad – the densely populated urban conurbation in the western Netherlands encompassing the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.
Almere was built on the Flevopolder, low-lying land reclaimed from the sea and kept dry by embankments. It was part of the Dutch new towns programme, which mainly ran from the late 1960s to 1980s and was partly inspired by the British New Towns Act of 1946 and Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City principles. Due to its proximity to Amsterdam, Almere functions as an overflow town[9]. Almere’s population is approximately 230,500 and is expected to “exceed 325,000 by 2050”[10] making it both the youngest and fastest growing city in the Netherlands.
Beyond the Netherlands, Almere offers transferable lessons to new town development internationally. Almere’s polycentric structure of green-blue networks connects well to nature, manages water and helps limit heat island effects. Its strong public transport and extensive walking and cycling connections allow people to move around in an easy, healthy way. Almere includes housing self-build zones on its urban edges where community-driven design is allowed. This adds flexibility to housing provision and food growing strategies. The emphasis on sustainable living offers a replicable model to other new towns.
Perhaps the most significant limitation of the transferability of Almere to other contexts is its land ownership. As Almere was built on reclaimed land, it benefitted from being a blank canvas with a lack of heritage constraints or issues with fragmentation due to private land ownership. This will not be the case in most places internationally.
2.3 Planning frameworks
Almere’s planning framework is characterised by its polycentric, multi-nucleus model. Almere is made up of multiple semi-autonomous districts, each with their own identity and amenities. Shared infrastructure and designated bicycle and bus lanes connect the districts, which are separated by green and blue landscape components. In its early years, the city exemplified Dutch urban planning traditions of top-down, masterplanned urban developments.
Yet, since the early 2000s, Almere has gained international attention for the popularity of its self-build initiatives in Homeruskwartier, a large-scale new district located in Almere Poort, community-focused housing and place design in the neighbourhood of Nobelhorst[11], and the experimental, citizen-driven planning model in Oosterwold, located on Almere’s eastern peri-urban edge. Almere has emerged as a notable case in urban food systems, particularly through Oosterwold, where planning regulations require residents to allocate 50 percent of their land to food production[12]. In 2020-2021, Almere became one of the first Dutch cities to establish an urban food strategy (UFS)[13].
2.4 Governance structures
The municipality of Almere was founded in 1984. Almere was established as one entity, despite its internal arrangement into separate urban nodes[14]. As the ownership of land was transferred to the municipality, service and infrastructure processes accelerated[15]. After the 2000s, it is thought that the financial crash “spurred urban experimentation” through “social housing models, an emphasis on self-organisation, community involvement and participatory planning”[16]. Almere is a strong case of active municipal agency, which is observable in its phased development and infrastructure provision.
2.5 Adaptability and flexibility: Levers and barriers
Almere is internationally recognised for its approach to food systems and the integration of urban agriculture in peri-urban development[17]. Geographically, food systems have always been significant to Almere due to its positioning within the Flevopolder. This area was initially reclaimed for agriculture and remains one of the most productive food regions in the Netherlands[18].
Oosterwold is a peri-urban district on the eastern-outskirts of Almere where the municipality has adopted a planning approach that combines residential development with ongoing agricultural activity[19]. Almere also has the aim of producing “10 percent of its future food” from Oosterwold[20].
Planning approaches in Oosterwold have avoided a detailed blueprint or masterplan. Instead, the development of the area occurs more organically, within minimal land use planning rules and “dependent on the self-organisation of the (future) residents”[21].
Academics note that due to the population of Almere, as well as the prospected growth in population, the city has not been “spared by urbanisation or the problem of feeding the city”[22]. Almere’s food-orientated planning represents both the continuation of its agricultural heritage and an experimental approach which integrates housing, self-organisation and food.
Other parts of Almere have also focused on food. Architects we interviewed who have completed a number of projects in Almere, including in the peri-urban neighbourhood of Nobelhorst, explain that the area “calls itself the village of Almere” and has a “Buurtschuur” (Neighbourhood Barn).
The architects reflected, from a recent visit to Nobelhorst, that “when you see the kids’ toys laying all over the playground you realise they are at home in their neighbourhood”.
The examples of Oosterwold and Nobelhorst are significant within the case study of Almere as local planning experiments. They are also important as part of Almere’s broader urban food strategy. This is supported by Dutch national policies that encourage innovation in sustainable development[23]. The self-organising framework here moves away from conventional planning or governance models. The municipality provides only broad parameters and leaves the practicalities of design, organisation and farming up to residents. In Oosterwold, as many residents do not come from backgrounds in agriculture, a handbook which contains background information in urban agriculture is provided to residents. Community groups have also organised knowledge exchanges on urban agriculture[24]. For urban planners internationally, Almere demonstrates how food systems can be creatively included in planning[25].
2.6 Thematic discussion
New towns as sites of urban experimentation
Since Almere was first established, the city has trialled novel approaches to housing delivery. When the area opened for development in the 1970s, there was a strong emphasis on people-centered planning. Throughout the 1980s and into the early 2000s, however, neoliberal policies drove rapid urbanisation and real estate development[26]. This evolution continued after the 2000s, when the financial crisis contributed to another evolution of Almere’s planning[27]. This led to experimentation with new housing models which prioritise self-organisation, community participation, and collaborative planning practices[28].
In its short history of 50 years, Almere’s approach to housing has continuously evolved. Urban planning in Almere has reflected political and economic trends of its time. This evolved from early top-down experiments, such as the 1970s neighbourhood of Almere Haven’s housing tailored for “introverts” and “extroverts”[29], to more recent initiatives like self-build schemes in Oosterwold. Almere Haven was built with an intricate street layout that has resulted in a convoluted and poorly legible urban form. Subsequent neighbourhoods have shifted toward more accessible and connected road layouts such as in Nobelhorst.
Homeruskwartier, located in Almere Poort, is the largest self-build neighbourhood in the Netherlands. It is a key example of Almere’s experimental approach to housing. Homeruskwartier accommodates a broad spectrum of lower and middle-income households. This includes those who might otherwise rely on social housing[30]. In contexts such as the Netherlands, the rise of self-builders has challenged the traditional dominance of commercial developers over land and profit[31].
This form of housing has attracted the attention of planners, policy-makers, and politicians because of its potential for self-builders to reflect their social and cultural values into the making of urban space[32]. As the project began before the 2008 financial crisis, construction was able to continue even as many developers halted their activities, with self-builders carrying forward the process. Self-building is directly linked to individual household incomes, making it less vulnerable to economic fluctuations than large-scale developments[33].
Self-building is a form of “do-it-yourself" urbanism, making it a symbol of individual freedom. Yet, in practice, self-build typically relies on frameworks such as “master planning, regulatory guidance, and building codes[34]. An example of this are “plot passports”, which are offered to residents and outline the parameters for what is possible on their land[35]. These have been understood as a source of “inspiration” for residents as opposed to restricting them[36]. Self-build programmes in Almere foster a sense of connectedness to place that is particularly valuable in a new town context, offering a compelling model for resident-led housing initiatives internationally.
Almere has been called a “laboratory for innovative housing solutions”[37].
2.7 The significance of social and cultural lived experience
Almere has been praised for its multiculturalism and sense of community. Currently, the city is home to 148 nationalities, and 44 percent of the urban population has a migration background[38]. Residents of Almere have organised a range of community groups and activities. There are “leisure locales” in Almere which include purely recreational areas such as a beach, lakes, and woodlands, as well as mixed-use areas such as shopping and entertainment areas[39]. Many of these “leisure locales” are orientated around nature, which has “strengthened future thinking” and created different types of landscapes, which in turn allow for more “possibilities of rootedness”[40].
The extensive and well-connected public transport, footpaths, and bicycle lanes are also a significant component of the sociability of the city. Almere has six railway stations which connect the city to Amsterdam and the wider region. Railway stations are integrated with extensive bus and tram services, bicycle lanes and pedestrian paths to reduce car dependency through sustainable mobility and active travel.
Like many new towns internationally, dominant narratives of Almere are often negative. In a newspaper poll in 2008, Almere was voted the “ugliest city in the Netherlands”, along with Nieuwegein, another new town built in the 1970s[41]. A shared characteristic of the nominated cities is that they are familiar to the Dutch public by name but rarely attract visitors from outside the local population. As a result, perceptions are shaped less by direct experience and more by assumptions and stereotypes[42].
