Urban Planning, Urban Improvement and the Retail Landscape in Amsterdam, 1600–1850

Abstract

From the end of the sixteenth century the economy of the Dutch Republic, a new player in the European state system, expanded vigorously, and within the new nation it was Amsterdam in particular that rose to prominence. Boosted by its maritime sector, the Amsterdam economy expanded and diversified, creating almost insatiable demand for space to accommodate its booming industries and the rapidly rising number of ships that entered its port as well as to house the many thousands of migrants who settled in the city and supplied it with the skills and labour needed to sustain economic growth.¹ It should therefore not come as a surprise that from the end of the sixteenth century to the third quarter of the seventeenth, after which period the growth of the Amsterdam economy and population slowed down, the municipal government was faced with the need to expand the city. Based on the principles of functionality, beauty and profitability they created a city that by the end of the seventeenth century was the most planned and organised large urban space in Europe.² Its canal district, in particular, contributed to Amsterdam’s fame as a model of urban planning and development, a role it would play for centuries. As late as the 1960s Lewis Mumford called Amsterdam ‘one of the greatest examples of the town planner’s art’, stating that ‘Nothing so thoroughly and uniformly good as Amsterdam had previously made its way into urban design, on the same scale, anywhere.’³