Hold the Line: The transformation of the New Dutch Waterline and the Future Possibilities of Heritage

The redevelopment of the New Dutch Waterline, also known as the New Hollandic Waterline, was crucial to a change in public appreciation of Dutch military heritage and its connection to landscape design. Starting in 1980, new methods of revitalization combined preservation, renewal, and narrative approaches. At the same time, the work on the New Dutch Waterline changed; a nationally driven project became a series of local interventions. Throughout the effort, it was critical to success to have different actors understand and promote it as a heritage landscape of national importance. The project undertook not only to revitalize individual fortresses, but to enhance regional identity and tourism, a new scale in heritage debates. This chapter shows the importance of understanding and intervening in defense heritage as landscape–as well as individual objects. It also indicates how addressing these different scales can help in future spatial challenges. Finally, it addresses how understanding water heritage can help to tackle the imminent challenge of climate change at the scale of the landscape.