Zoetermeer
Zoetermeer is a city in the Western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of of which is water. A small village until the late 1960s, it had 6,392 inhabitants in 1950. By 2023 this had grown to 126,998, making it the fourth largest population centre in the province of South Holland, after Rotterdam, The Hague and Leiden. While now a city in its own right, Zoetermeer started out as a suburb of The Hague and is still a part of the Greater The Hague urban area.
The name Zoetermeer refers to the former lake north of the town. Because the name literally translates as "sweet lake" local residents have dubbed Zoetermeer "Sweet Lake City".
History
The Zoetermeer Archaeological Working Group has found some Roman shards, but they are so few that it is not clear whether Zoetermeer already existed in Roman times. Excavation did find older animal material. During the extraction of sand for the new housing estates, bones of mammoths, aurochs and saber-toothed tigers surfaced from great depths. Those animals walked around here ten to a hundred thousand years ago.The village of Zoetermeer is more than a thousand years old. In the Middle Ages, farmers dug so-called valley holes. The clay from those holes was used to improve their peatland. At the bottom of one such hole, Zoetermeer archaeologists found a carved wooden pole a few years ago, dating back to the year 985.
Zoetermeer used to have to pay a certain tax, the botting, to the Count of Holland. It is known that only the oldest towns in this province paid that tax. This shows that Zoetermeer must have been founded at least before 1100. The first written evidence for the existence of a village on the site of present-day Zoetermeer is found in 1269. Count Floris V then gave away part of the tax revenue here as a dowry.
In the 13th century a village center was formed, which still exists as the historic Dorpsstraat. Until the 17th century there was a lake called the Zoetermeer. A reminder of this is the "Zoetermeerse Plas" in the Noord Aa recreation area at the northern edge of town; this artificial lake was created when tons of sand were needed to lay the foundation for new housing development, and the area north of Zoetermeer was a good source of this resource.
After the foundation of Zoetermeer, the settlement Zegwaart arose at the site of the present Zegwaartseweg. It was probably named after the sedge-covered worth, a low-lying area, where most people went to live. In the 13th century the settlement centers moved from Langeland and Zegwaartseweg to Dorpsstraat. In 1296 there was probably already a church on the site where the Oude Kerk now stands. Zoetermeer and Zegwaart remained independent, but formed one parish.
Zoetermeer developed more prosperously over the centuries than Zegwaart. That village suffered relatively often from fires and floods. On May 1, 1935, both municipalities were merged into the present municipality of Zoetermeer. Seghwaert, an older way of spelling of Zegwaard, is now the name of a neighbourhood outside the old village centre.
Zoetermeer began to grow slightly when the first train service came around 1868. A few decades later the Numico factory started near the station. The real growth started in 1966, when there was an urgent need of houses from people around The Hague. From then they started to build new quarters around the old village centre, so Zoetermeer began to grow and became a city in the meantime.
Although contemporary Zoetermeer has the image of a modern city, there are still remains of the past. Like the old village centre with its small houses and the church with late medieval 15th-century clock tower, and the old farms, surrounded by modern houses nowadays.
Lake Dobbe divides the old town from the new city centre, with the medieval village centre on one side of the lake and the modern high-rise and skyscrapers on the other side.
Neighbourhoods
Zoetermeer is divided into 6 neighbourhoods, which cover most of the municipality's territory, with the remainder being the commercial area in the east and the mostly green and undeveloped Buitengebied in the west. Every neighbourhood has at least one shopping mall and a tram stop. Each neighbourhood consists of one or more wijken, each of which has a separate postcode with differing last two digits following "27", from within Zoetermeer's 2710-2729 assigned postcodesThese neighbourhoods have the following names :
Meerzicht (1969)
Literally meaning "lake view", Meerzicht is divided by the RandstadRail light rail tracks into Meerzicht-Oost, with taller block of flats, and Meerzicht-West with low-rise residential development. Further to the west is the water-rich, 280-hectare urban park and recreation area Westerpark.Buytenwegh de Leyens (1974)
The development of this area marked the shift to the development of single-family homes with private gardens more popular with Dutch families of that and coming decades, and encompasses the much older settlements of Buytenwegh and De Leyens, and an area called "Buytenwegh de Leyens" per se.Centrum (1978)
The construction of a new centre of Zoetermeer actually started only in 1981, to serve as a shopping and administrative heart of the city. It followed modern urban planning principles, placing parking garages, some storage facilities and a RandstadRail station on the ground level, which is covered by pedestrian- and bicycle-only area with shops on the lower floors and apartments above them, to ensure the centre does not die out outside of the business hours.The centre was completed in phases, the last one being the Cadenza residential development in 2017. The Stadscentrum has two RandstadRail stations. The Centrum-West station is the terminus of RandstadRail line 3 and is the locations of Zoetermeer's busiest bus station. The Stadscentrum includes the modern town hall of Zoetermeer and the local police station. A small lake called Grote Dobbe is placed directly in between Stadscentrum and Dorp, with the promenades and bicycle paths along the lake connecting the old and the new centres of Zoetermeer. The postcode for Stadscentrum is 2711.
Noordhove & Seghwaert (1986)
Noordhove is located between Seghwaert to the south and the artificial lake known as 'Zoetermeerse Plas' to the north. Unlike the other wijken, it has no dedicated RandstadRail station, as both RandstadRail track branches run to the south of it.Rokkeveen (1987)
Rokkeveen is separated from the other wijken by the A12 motorway and the Den Haag-Gouda railway line. As such, it enjoys direct access to Zoetermeer's railway stations and features numerous crossings under or over both transport corridors to allow access to the rest of Zoetermeer. Rokkeveen is further divided into Rokkeveen-Oost and Rokkeveen-West. A significant turning point in the development of this part of town was the Floriade 1992, which took place there.Rokkeveen-Oost extends between the railway stations Zoetermeer-Oost and Zoetermeer. The Mandelabrug was built over the latter for the Floriade as a covered bicycle and pedestrian passage over the railway, motorway and the RandstadRail, which adjoins it at this point from the North. The Mandelabrug connects the train station, the Randstadrail station Driemanspolder and the wijken of Rokkeveen-Oost and Driemanspolder. Next to the Mandelabrug runs a road crossing - a bridge between Afrikaweg on the northern side and Zuidweg in Rokkeveen.
The other crossing are the road, pedestrian and bicycle tunnels between Tweede and Eerste Stationsstraat next to Zoetermeer-Oost train station, connecting Rokkeveen-Oost with Dorp. The historic water tower De Tien Gemeenten is also now located in Rokkeveen-Oost.
Rokkeveen-West mainly encompasses newer development on the grounds of the former Floriade-park, which includes both residential and office buildings.
Oosterheem (1999)
Oosterheem is the newest district of Zoetermeer, a Vinex-location and the source of Zoetermeer's most recent and continuing growth, which allowed it to become the third most populous municipality in South Holland. The districts development was not without problematic issues and delays, stemming first from the concerns over the environmental impacts of such development, and later from the planning and construction of HSL-Zuid, which now forms the district's and municipality's eastern border. An enduring concern is an old pipeline, now used for the transportation of pressurized CO2, which runs through Oosterheem.Oosterheem is served by three stations on RandstadRail line 4, whose tracks branch out from the original RandstadRail loop in Seghwaert. It is further divided into Oosterheem-Oost and Oosterheem-West.