In ten years, residents of large cities in the Netherlands have had less space to exercise, because halls have been replaced by homes and offices, among other things. This is evident from a data analysis of NRC based on maps from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on land use between 2010 and 2020.
In very urban areas – where more than 4 million Dutch people live and where certain neighborhoods have the worst scores in terms of obesity and exercise poverty – the area shrank by almost half a square meter due to population growth. Both outdoor and indoor sports facilities were considered, such as football, hockey, basketball, volleyball courts and tennis parks.
Large cities have an average of 10 square meters of sports space per capita – less than half the surface area in the rest of the Netherlands. This number is probably even lower in reality, as the most recent available CBS data comes from 2020 and the population has continued to grow strongly since then.
NOC-NSF, the umbrella organization of sports associations, says it is very concerned about NRC’s findings. Research commissioned by the sports association recently showed that there are major problems with . Three thousand sports clubs have a waiting list or even a complete membership freeze. People can no longer go to large cities. The waiting lists occur in many sports, from football and volleyball clubs to archery clubs. Children in particular are often unable to practice the sport of their choice.
NRC’s findings make the problem “even more urgent,” says director of recreational sports Guido Davio of NOC-NSF. “We understand that space in the Netherlands is very scarce and valuable. But that cannot be at the expense of sport and exercise. Not only because people stay fit and vital through sport, but also because it is an important connecting factor in neighborhoods.”
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Overweight
Professor of internal medicine and obesity expert Liesbeth van Rossum calls it “incomprehensible” that the space for sports in big cities has decreased. Half of all Dutch people do not exercise enough, which leads to cardiovascular disease and conditions such as diabetes type 2. According to the RIVM, an estimated 5,800 people die every year due to lack of exercise.
Obesity is an increasingly serious problem: according to the latter Public Health Future Outlook (2024) from the RIVM, 64 percent of Dutch people will be overweight by 2050. According to internist Van Rossum, sport and exercise are not only crucial for public health but also “the basis of our economy”. “If you want to keep people at work and therefore healthy, you have to make room for sports.”
Poverty of exercise occurs more often in metropolitan neighborhoods where people a lower socio-economic status and therefore have less to spend. One of the main goals of the current outgoing cabinet on this file was to increase the sports participation of children and adults living in poverty from 44 to 52 percent within a few years. It turns out that the opposite is happening a letter to Parliament last summer: between 2023 and 2024, sports participation among this group fell to 38 percent.
‘Space for housing’
Directors from the major cities confirm the decrease in sports space. In The Hague, almost 90,000 square meters disappeared between 2010 and 2020, the municipality calculated – equivalent to twelve football fields. Councilor Sofyan Mbarki (Sport, PvdA) from Amsterdam (min 200,000 square meters) calls the NRC figures through his spokesperson “in line with what we have observed for the period 2010-2020”. His colleague Faouzi Achbar (Sport, Denk) from Rotterdam (450,000 square meters less) says that he finds the findings “recognizable” and states that the disappearance of sports fields “is partly due to [is] driven by the desire to find space for housing and offices.”
The major cities say that they use their sports space more efficiently, including by installing artificial grass, which can be played on at least three times as intensively as normal grass. and ensured that football clubs with declining membership numbers merged with each other. Achbar: “This restructuring is a major cause of the decrease in the number of sports fields and the decrease in the number of Rotterdam football clubs.”
Many municipalities also say that residents are increasingly exercising outside clubs in public spaces. That supposed growing popularity of urban sports such as skating, freerunning and swimming in open water, it is difficult to substantiate this with figures. According to councilor Hilbert Bredemeijer (Sport, CDA) of The Hague, many municipalities use urban sports “a bit as an excuse” to get rid of club fields.
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If you look at the whole of the Netherlands, you will see that a total of 5,000 hectares (about 6,600 football fields) of new sports space were added between 2010 and 2020, while 3,000 hectares disappeared (equal to about 4,000 football fields), according to the NRC analysis. As a result, taking into account population growth, the number of square meters per capita generally remained the same: on average, a Dutch person has 21 square meters of sports space. That seems like good news, but growth is unevenly distributed across the country, and the decrease in space is mainly concentrated in cities.
The differences between city and countryside have therefore become greater. In addition, the figures are distorted by the enormous growth of golf courses in the years studied: If the growth of golf courses (it is the sport with the highest contribution in the country) is not included, the sports space throughout the Netherlands has shrunk by half a square meter per inhabitant.
Cuts on sports facilities
The NRC findings contrast with the ambitions of the government. The current outgoing government wants three-quarters of Dutch people to exercise sufficiently in fifteen years, but at the same time has cut 28 million euros in sports accommodations – which has led to major concerns in the sports world.
Various national and local sports agreements have also been concluded in recent years, in which an important goal has always been to create more space for sports. Those plans have been “barely implemented”, so to speak researchers concluded of the Mulier Institute in a study among eighteen municipalities commissioned by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS).
In a letter to Parliament Outgoing State Secretary Judith Tielen (VWS, VVD) recently acknowledged that cities in particular give “insufficient priority” to sports and exercise. ‘Competing spatial demands’, such as housing, are too often given priority. Municipalities and sports associations have asked her to draw up national guidelines for square meters of sports space – there are currently no rules for this.
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