Changes in landscape openness

During the 20^th century the inter-landscape differences in openness diminished. Semi-open landscape increased, at the expense of the "closed" small-scale landscape and the very open landscape. Some landscapes have lost all their openness because of urban and industrial development.

Trends

Since 1850 there has been a huge change in the variation in the openness of the Dutch landscape. In the 19^th century there were still huge differences in openness, but in the 20^th century these diminished greatly: the percentage of the area of open landscapes was halved. In the part of the country below sea-level, the percentage fell from 50% to about 25%; in the higher-lying area the percentage fell from over 10% to less than 5%. The changes resulted from an increase in the planting of trees and shrubs, and - more particularly - from the expansion of cities, towns and villages.

Conversely, areas with many wooded banks and other tall vegetation became more open, because many of these small landscape elements disappeared during rural land consolidation and farm modernisation schemes. As a result, the small-scale character of the landscape disappeared and was replaced by semi-open landscape.

Concomitantly, there was a big increase in the percentage of areas with no open spaces - especially in the part of the country below sea-level. These are very densely built-up areas (towns and cities, villages, greenhouse complexes and industrial areas) and large mature forests.