Immigration and the Randstad

 Today I'm going to talk about immigration and a metro region that most Americans may not have heard of even though they've heard of its component parts: the Randstad region in the Netherlands, aka the conurbation that includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht--and many points in between.

Why talk about this, instead of about Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc. alone? Because like my post on Toronto, but even more so, what matters here if you're considering immigrating is the region, not the city. As I'll discuss below, being in Haarlem instead of Amsterdam makes a difference to your life, of course, but that difference isn't like being in Seattle vs. Miami; they truly are one connected mega-city, and that has significant implications for the potential immigrant urbanist experience.

Not Seattle vs. Miami but maybe Miami Subs in Haarlem though.

1. Lots of Options, If You Can Afford Them

Let me get one thing out of the way right at the top: the Netherlands has a massive housing crisis, which at least some of the locals really want to blame on immigrants. This is a recurring theme in our coverage here, of course: it seems like every major city in the West at least and the world more generally has a housing crisis, because we have created some very excellent places to live and then not built enough housing in them. 

The Netherlands are particularly small, though, so this becomes especially problematic. 

The beauty of the Randstad from an urbanist perspective is that because of its excellent transit and biking links, you can live almost anywhere in it and commute to or just visit almost anywhere else in it pretty easily (during engineering works excepted). Here is Amsterdam Centraal, the (duh) central station in Amsterdam:

Here, about five minutes of train away, is Amsterdam Sloterdijk:

Here, a bit over ten minutes from there, is Haarlem Centraal:

For context, from the NS (Dutch national rail, Nederlandse Spoorwegen) website:

That's a 17 minute trip, with 147 trains a day, or more than one every ten minutes. Metro-like frequency between two cities and three major stops. And it costs about five euros.

The Dutch still complain about NS service, which is somehow both reasonable (compared to historic performance benchmarks and prices) and ridiculous (coming from the US).

And this somehow isn't the most metro-like service between cities in the Randstad, since the Rotterdam metro actually literally goes to the Hague (line E to Den Haag Centraal). 

So while there is definitely a housing crisis, that crisis ends up functionally spread across the whole region--and that means that it's a larger and more dynamic housing market than it seems at first glance (though it does also mean you can get scooped by someone else who is also working in a different city--it goes both ways).

It also means that there is a large variation in the kind of places you can live and still work and experience culture etc. across the region. Want to live in a suburb? Sure. A major downtown? Got that. Rural? Surprisingly yes. The integration of the transportation networks means these are all options.

2. Flat-rate Urbanism

Look, the Netherlands are expensive even in Europe and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But that flattens out somewhat if you make two comparisons that are meaningful for this series: the Randstad versus other major metros and the Randstad versus the rest of the Netherlands.

This post does a pretty decent job of laying out what I mean, even though I'm not sure the post realizes it. If you look at the cost of living in any of the cities it mentions against New York, they're all 60-70% as expensive--not cheap but all cheaper than NYC.

And crucially, the "most expensive" and "least expensive" cities it lists are all in that range: it's a fairly flat space of costs. That's what I mean by flat-rate urbanism: whereas in the US or large parts of Europe there is massive variation in costs that can make large cities unbearably expensive, in the Netherlands the Randstad gives you good urbanism for basically the cost of living in the country at all.

Some of that is because the Randstad is a lot of the Netherlands. But Groningen up north doesn't get much cheaper, nor do the more rural areas. The Netherlands are expensive, but the urbanist core doesn't cost a premium on top of that, and that's a meaningful benefit if you're looking for somewhere to immigrate. And that urbanism isn't necessarily expensive compared to urbanism elsewhere, either--if you're looking for somewhere urbanist to immigrate, you're not comparing to the cheapest places on earth, but to other urban locations, and that makes the Randstad look better.

3. The Dang Grocery Stores

Look, I'm already on the record about this so I won't beat a dead horse.

I like shopping for groceries in Dutch supermarkets.

I like their size, their frequent appearance throughout neighborhoods, the freshness of their produce, and their selection given their size. I think that it's a healthier way to approach food acquisition than we usually see in American cities, and I think it's also a benefit for immigrants who may not be certain where they want to shop, what food they want to buy, which staple foods from the new country they want to adapt to and which they wish to cling to from the old. You can and should try multiple places; you can and should expect there to be multiple places to try. And you can take part in the Gym of Life along the way because you don't need to drive to access them.

I haven't even touched on the biking culture, really--that should tell you how much I like the grocery stores.

So yes: the Netherlands aren't cheap, they're getting less friendly to immigrants as so many places are, and they have a lot of complaints about their (from the outside) very good rail service. But there's a reason they're seen as an urbanist mecca, and the Randstad is a great place if you're looking for that in an immigration experience.

Plus if you're American there's the DAFT treaty, which makes it infinitely easier to go to the Netherlands than any of their neighbors.

It's not a slam dunk (compare the distance from Toronto to the US border vs. Amsterdam...) but it's definitely worth considering.