The Noordoostpolder: A Landscape Planning Perspective on the Preservation and Development of Twentieth-Century Polder Landscapes in the Netherlands

The Netherlands has a centuries-long tradition of reclaiming land. In the last century gaining land from water peaked with the IJsselmeerpolders, made possible by technical innovations. The Noordoostpolder (1937–1942), one of the IJsselmeerpolders, is a unique example of a fully designed agricultural landscape of the twentieth century. It is the first Dutch modern polder in which the layout was planned as an integral task, involving all its agricultural, urban, and landscape elements at once, while reflecting the state of the art in design, science, and engineering. Using the Noordoostpolder as an example, this chapter discusses the preservation and development of twentieth-century polders as cultural heritage landscapes. It elaborates a preservation-through-planning approach that takes spatial development with historical landscape structures as a basis. The chapter also briefly elaborates a critical way of understanding the coherence and variation of modern landscapes such as the Noordoostpolder, providing clues for spatial planning by systematically delineating and identifying spatial design principles.