Brand new home, but no containers, playground or childcare nearby

This is a well-known problem in Weesp: the new residential area of ​​Weespersluis attracts handfuls of young families, but arranging sufficient childcare turns out to be a major task for the municipality. Parents are forced to move to nearby centers, but finding a place there is not easy either. After a few years of waiting, the district now has its own childcare facility, but it does not have nearly enough places to take care of all the children.

Angry parents, when they noticed that childcare was not getting off the ground, decided to try for themselves what to put on† This was ultimately unsuccessful due to divergent rules, but it does indicate how big the problem is.

No waste dump or playgrounds

But also in the young Tudorpark district in Hoofddorp, according to residents, insufficient decisiveness has been shown in filling in the facilities in the district.

Councilor Nikkie Elfers of Haarlemmermeerse Active Politics (HAP) endorses this. The first homes were completed in 2015, but the first facilities for disposing of your waste were only installed in the summer of 2020. Residents had to remove all their waste types (eg glass, cardboard and organic waste) on average 4.5 kilometers away, in other neighbourhoods.

In addition, the municipality promised on completion seven years ago that playgrounds would be installed within six months, as the neighborhood attracts many young families. “Ultimately, it was indicated that these would only be installed in the summer of 2018. Only a few playgrounds were built between 2018 and today. Play areas that were in the building plans took so long that the residents themselves only had to build an improvised playground. have put down,” said Elfers, who asked the mayor and aldermen for clarification about several abuses within this new-build project by means of written questions.

Why are these facilities not being added?

According to Joey Engelen, advisor for a future-proof living environment at the Over Morgen agency, a simple explanation is that the pressure on the housing market is too high. “There is enormous pressure from politicians on ‘we must build as many homes as possible’, and that is all happening at a certain pace. That is logical, but it may therefore be the case that the quality of the living environment that we are living with can be compromised.” n all would like, so including social facilities, with mobility solutions and climate adaptation, that this is occasionally crossed out when the project is being developed. Ultimately, the land must also yield something.”

For example, housing and commercial space yield the most for the developing party, and social real estate such as schools, GPs or childcare less. “But the municipality and the developing party do have a responsibility to develop sound neighborhoods with social housing facilities,” said Engelen.

So what should municipalities do?

According to Engelen, municipalities must stand up for themselves and indicate when developing the environmental vision that the quality of life in new residential areas has priority. “Sometimes that is just plain saying to a project developer: ‘You can develop here, but that percentage must be social real estate’. We have not dared that enough in recent years, we have left too much to the project developer and the government. do not dare to say that we can also look for another project developer.”

“Developing a liveable neighborhood is not that difficult, but you do have to take it into account in planning. You have to be willing to pay for it, because in the end it does have social value.”

And now?

According to Joey Engelen, measures must be taken, otherwise problems will arise. For example, the municipality of Rotterdam has developed a framework for social facilities, whereby new neighborhoods to be built must meet certain requirements in relation to the number of inhabitants. And it’s not just about amenities. “We want people to stop getting into the car, but if all facilities are centralized, people will still have to travel further for the doctor or the sports club. We are already seeing it become silted up, and the schools in that district will then form.” traffic unsafe situations again.”

Engelen does indicate that it is sometimes a matter of time. “If you are the first resident to live in a new residential area, you cannot expect that all facilities will already be there. If you open a general practitioner’s practice while only a handful of people live in a neighborhood, that practice will not have enough patients and things will fall over. On the other hand, the pressure on facilities in many places is now so great that there will be overflow from older neighborhoods, where the GP may have too many patients.”