Village monitor

Original title: De dorpenmonitor. Ontwikkelingen in de leefsituatie van dorpsbewoners Netherlands has invested a great deal in rural development in recent decades. Creating nature areas, encouraging small-scale entrepreneurship and involving residents in their living environment are among the measures that have been taken in order to build vital villages which are pleasant places to live. The renewed countryside has a number of different faces, however. While a proportion of Dutch villages are successfully developing into prosperous residential villages with excellent quality of life, others are faced with a shrinking population and decline. The Village Monitor provides an insight into recent changes in the life situation of the 5.3 million people who live in the Dutch countryside. Using a diversity of statistical sources, we address an array of themes including education, employment, safety, mobility, health, citizen participation and contacts between neighbours. We look for differences in the countryside, and draw a distinction between large and small villages and between villages close to urban centres and isolated villages. Special attention is devoted to the 'real‘ countryside: small, isolated villages. We outline how the life situation of the almost two million people who live in these villages is associated with the presence of an attractive rural landscape and with preventing population shrinkage. The Village Monitor was commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. It is a follow-up to the report At home in the countryside (Thuis op het Platteland), which was published in 2006