[nederdirk]

Bottom line (according to the article): The Netherlands is quite densely populated, so every wind turbine is bound to be in someone's backyard. Last paragraph explains that more than 70% of the population is in favor of more wind energy, but many people don't like the face of large windmill parks.

[tikumo]

As a dutch guy, i can agree with this. Lots of people complain about the flickering you get from windmills for example. Only one province is full of windmills, because it is mainly agriculture, cows and flowers, it is called Flevoland and it is the piece of land we gained from "poldering", the old South "sea" (it was named Zuiderzee) we've made into land..

[stinos]

Sure it is densely populated, but doesn't the major part of that density reside in cities and villages, while once you get outside of those there are vast amounts of land with only some farms?? As such, are they really always in one's backyard (if you don't consider a farmer's land far far away from the actual farm as a backyard)?

Actually I think wobbleblob's reason (because they scare birds and pollute the horizon) is a more prominent reason, I find the Netherlands always quite pretty in comparision with surrounding countries so I'd understand people are reluctant to change that much. Nicer, more colourful buildings, nicer gardens, ... then again it's also a bit boring to me due to being quite flat.

[wobbleblob]

> I find the Netherlands always quite pretty in comparision with surrounding countries

Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this is really not something I have ever heard before. There are many things to like about living here, but what parts of it are pretty?

[stinos]

I guess you're used to it :] I'm mainly comparing to Belgium, and most people I know here actually think the same; might be because we look at it from a more tourist POV and tend to ignore uglier things but still:

- not a lot of ribbon development. That alone makes a huge difference.

- cities of comparable size seem to have more green overall (trees, plants in front of houses, more parks etc). Typical example is something like Ravenstein. Seems to have more park than actual housing area.

- nicer architecture (again, eye of the beholder, but hey we have a 'ugly belgian houses' book :]) for instance streets whith all pretty much the same houses, but every third house has a door in a different pastel color etc. Not sure that even existst here. Or apartment buildings with some color to it.

Of course there also are more ugly things (e.g. there are beautiful pieces of the Waal with nice tiny isles and such, then you look more to the left and there's a rather ugly concrete factory or so; some cities have more 'ghetto-style' places but still not as bad as some parts of Brussles I think). But in general I like it more.

[creshal]

The area is also quite flat, so they're visible from miles away and stick out like sore thumbs. Personally I don't mind – I grew up near the Dutch border, our village was surrounded with windmills in the early 00s, can't say it ever bothered me, even though they were constantly in view (and while not in our backyard, some were quite close).

[krzyk]

Strange, that they call it densely populated, it's quite average for a European country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_Europea...

[duckmysick]

On the list you linked Netherlands is ranked 8th out of 54 countries. I wouldn't call that "average". Besides, the first seven countries on that list are small. Four are microstates and the other three are British dependencies.

I'd say, for it's size, Netherlands is densely populated.

[krzyk]

Yes, you are right. Sorry I once again mistaken Dutch people as the ones living in Denmark. Now it makes much more sense, once again sorry for confusion.

[jacquesm]

It's actually a bit different than what you'd get from that table. NL (like most countries) has varying population density. What's not obvious is that NL has a crazy distribution where we have a large chunk (the 'Randstad') that contains a very large portion of the population and a relatively much larger area that is just about empty.

So depending on where you are you can travel for 150 Km and never leave the built-up areas or you can travel for 150 Km and you'll see nothing but grass, cows, the occasional farm and the highway you're on (A6/A7).

[gbtw]

Unfortunately the distribution is not optimal for economic reasons. I live in a village (Zoetermeer) (123 000 people) with an density of 9000 people per square mile. Is not uncommon for these densities in the Randstad, where the avarage density over this area is around 4000 per square mile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad

[talideon]

I'm not sure you're reading that right. Everything with a higher population density is a city state or a tiny island nation. Excluding those, it's the country with the highest population density in Europe, with a population density almost four times that of Europe (except Russia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) itself.

The Netherlands is most certainly not quite average as far as population density goes.

[paublyrne]

Thanks.