'Daar het amoveren van gebouwen in deze dagen zo algemeen is'. Het stedelijk beleid inzake krimp in Hoorn en Enkhuizen in de lange achttiende eeuw

Abstract

The population of the North-Holland towns of Hoorn and Enkhuizen declined dramatically in the period 1680–1830, sinking to an all-time low at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Between 1622 and 1829 the population of Hoorn almost halved. In Enkhuizen the number of inhabitants declined by over 75 per cent up to 1840, while 2,500 of the original 3,615 houses disappeared. Despite extensive analysis of the economic and demographic decline of towns and cities in the Dutch Republic from a historical perspective, there has been relatively little research into the spatial consequences of this decline. Data concerning the question of whether and how municipal authorities regulated the practice of demolition is particularly scanty. This article, based on a case study of Hoorn and Enkhuizen provides an impression of the policies these two cities initiated with the aim of curbing or regulating the practice of demolition. Archival research into over 350 rediscovered renovation and demolition applications and legislation and regulation from the period 1795–1813 offers a more detailed picture of the scale, impact, location and policies surrounding the renovation and demolition process at the end of eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The applications reveal that the local authorities, and later the national government, expressly initiated policies aimed at tackling the impact of population decline and the practice of demolition and that this had direct consequences for the scale and extent of demolition. The authorities focused on three main points: preserving the townscape by preventing the visual degradation of the city, maintaining the safety of adjacent buildings and dikes, and maintaining property tax revenues. A comparison of practices in Hoorn and Enkhuizen also makes it possible to transcend the level of the individual town and make more general pronouncements about the consequences of policy for the urban landscape.