Holland: What if city living also meant you could grow your own food? One Dutch community has it sussed
The Dutch experiment at Oosterwold offers a radically different model of urban living. John Gibbons visited the residents to see how it’s done
By John Gibbons
The Journal
Oct 3, 2026
Excerpt:
A project had reclaimed several thousand hectares of polder from the sea, which meant they effectively had a blank canvas in terms of what to do with what was effectively brand new land. From this, the idea grew that is today known as Oosterwold, a quasi-urban experiment spanning over 4,000 hectares that uniquely softens the lines between farming and living space.
I visited Oosterwold, now comprising over 2,000 homes and around 5,000 residents, this summer, accompanied by Dr Jan Eelco Jansma of Wageningen University & Research, who has been involved for the last two decades in conceiving and shaping this project since its inception. It is envisaged that its population will expand to 15,000 homes and well over 30,000 residents in the coming years.
While Dutch planning law is notoriously rigid, with the location, shape and style of housing strictly regulated, Oosterwold is different. Here, people are allowed, within broad guidelines, to build as they please, with generous allotments on which to do it. The catch: all residents have to grow food on at least half of their holding.
How exactly this is done is left to the individual. Some people rent their land to a professional farmer, who works the land while they continue to commute to work in Almere or Amsterdam. For others, it looks more like ‘The Good Life’, with orchards, greenhouses, polytunnels and an abundance of kitchen garden plots, including chickens, goats and even some sheep, that were also once common in Ireland but have all-but disappeared in the last half century.
Read the complete article here.
Source: https://cityfarmer.info/holland-what-if-city-living-also-meant-you-could-grow-your-own-food-one-dutch-community-has-it-sussed/
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