Near Amsterdam, a pioneering neighborhood "gives the land back to the people"

Everyone builds at their own pace and according to their desires in Oosterwold, a 43 square kilometer green space near Amsterdam. Provided you respect certain rules, such as dedicating at least half of your land to urban agriculture.

"We can build everything ourselves and decide everything," explains Barbera van Schaik, 45, in the middle of her plot where potatoes, onions and fruit trees grow near her house, which is still under construction.

"It's very pleasant", "especially combined with the promotion of urban agriculture", she adds to AFP. This bio-informatician with a passion for gardening left the Dutch capital to embark on the "Oosterwold experiment" almost two years ago.

The land, located on "polders", these areas reclaimed from the sea, was long dedicated to organic farming, before the land was "returned to the people" in 2016 for this initiative imagined by the firm MVRDV and a politician Dutch.

"Romantic picture"

Their plot purchased, residents have free time to build housing and infrastructure, under certain conditions.

Dwellings must be well insulated and residents must favor renewable energies and heat pumps. Half of the land must be devoted to urban agriculture and there must be public living and circulation spaces.

Oosterwold is "unique", its inhabitants proudly claim, although not everything is so simple, they concede.

In front of an elegant building that seems to blend into its vast green grounds, built with the help of an architect and a contractor, Nadine Elzas, 55, says she lives in a "paradise".

Arrived in Oosterwold in 2017, she underlines that the initiative also allows exchanges that are fundamentally different from those in town, "where we barely know each other".

People often have a "romantic image" of the project, however, and may underestimate the flexibility needed to implement it, she explains.

The construction of roads, which is defined between associations of inhabitants, is for example the subject of heated discussions, whether on the materials to be used, the way of proceeding and or the division of costs.

“You would have thought that building a road would be easier,” says Barbara, as the bumpy dirt road to her plot still waits for the neighbors to agree.

Construction costs "a lot of energy", she explains, especially for those who, like her, build everything from A to Z. Some plots are abandoned and left fallow.

And for those who have no experience in the field, urban agriculture is "a challenge", adds Jeroen Dobber, 39, who mainly chose Oosterwold to get away from the constraints in traditional towns.

"Good for the World"

Many plots offered by the initiative have been purchased by developers of real estate projects, and their tenants are not always so aware of what is expected of them, we observe.

Some also lament the lack of public services and schools nearby, but according to Mr. Dobber, "it will come".

The residents are of all ages, and of different political opinions, according to Mr. Dobber, but most have a high level of education, he notes.

And if social housing is also being built, the increase in land prices does not promote diversity.

The place is very popular. A second phase of the project is due to start in 2025 and could learn from the first years of the experience, for example by handing over responsibility for water drainage and the construction of certain roads to the municipality of nearby Almere.

Oosterwold will have 15.000 lots, of which a tenth has already been sold, but will not grow more than that, guarantees Nadine. She nevertheless hopes that the initiative, "good for the world", will be imitated elsewhere.