Urban Dutchmen outnumber rural area residents

VOORBURG - More people (6.8 million) these days live in urban settings than in rural communities (6.5 million). The remainder of the 16.6 million inhabitants live in so-called transition areas: large villages and commuter clusters at the edges of the cities. Seven years ago, the numbers were reversed. The trend is the result of the ongoing urbanization of the country, which saw more people becoming city dwellers, especially in Limburg, Gelderland, Noord-Brabant and Zuid-Holland. In the provinces of North and South Holland around 64 percent of all inhabitants reside in urban centres. At the other end of the scale, only 7 percent of Drenthe’s inhabitants live in a city.