Municipalities in the Netherlands

All provinces of the Netherlands are divided into municipalities (gemeenten), together 467 (2005); among these we can distinguish:

• those comprising one main city, town or village with the same name as the municipality, and possibly some additional villages; for example
  • Utrecht, comprising the city Utrecht and the villages De Meern, Haarzuilens, Vleuten.
  • Valkenburg (South Holland), just a small village, yet a municipality by itself.
• those comprising several villages, none with the name of the municipality; in that case the name of the municipality may not be as well-known outside it as the villages; for example:
  • Albrandswaard comprising the villages of Poortugaal and Rhoon.
• those with a double name, comprising (mainly) the two towns or villages in the name, for example:
  • Berkel en Rodenrijs, comprising the villages Berkel and Rodenrijs.
• those comprising a main town and additional villages, yet the municipality is not named after this town; for example:
  • Smallingerland with main town Drachten.
  • Haarlemmermeer with main town Hoofddorp.

Recent politics have led to a great number of mergers between smaller municipalities or with cities.

In 2005 the number of municipalities was reduced by 16: 7 were each added to an existing municipality, and four new municipalities were formed by merging 5, 4, 2, and 2 municipalities.

All municipalities are listed in the province articles, see:

• Drenthe#Municipalities
• Flevoland#Municipalities
• Friesland#Municipalities
• Gelderland#Municipalities
• Groningen#Municipalities
• Limburg#Municipalities
• North Brabant#Municipalities
• North Holland#Municipalities
• Overijssel#Municipalities
• South Holland#Municipalities
• Utrecht#Municipalities
• Zeeland#Municipalities

Further subdivisions

Based on a subdivision made for the 1947 census, there are ca. 2,400 quarters, subdivided in ca. 11,000 neighborhoods.

On the other hand, there is a list of 7,000 places.

A large place consists of several quarters, but a small place is only part of a quarter.

See links below.

See also

• Cities of the Netherlands
• Geography of the Netherlands

External links

• changes from 2005 (in Dutch)

For the links below, and the articles, note that they do not always reflect the 2005 situation yet.

• province maps showing subdivision in municipalities, link for each municipality to basic data page
• list of municipalities
• overheid.nl (www.overheid.nl/info/english.html) – official Dutch government site
• http://home.wxs.nl/~pagklein/gemprov.html
• for each municipality a pdf file – with statistics in Dutch, and with (towards the end) a map showing the neighborhoods (together ca. 11,000), and listing (a few pages further) the population figures etc. as well as the grouping into quarters (together ca 2,400)
• lists of "places" (towns, villages, and various smaller entities), with municipality: alphabetical (ca. 4,800) – by province (extended, ca. 7,000)
• http://www.statoids.com/ynl.html