Beginning in the late 18the century, this overview of town planning in the Netherlands records the way the Dutch rebuilt the cities they inherited from the seventeenth century, replaced the water-based infrastructure first by extensive railway systems and then by a network of highways, restructured the rural countryside to increase agricultural production and then redeveloped it as the setting for suburban sprawl, created planning tools envied in the rest of the world and then replaced them by nebulous forms of public private partnership - in short, this book is about how the cities, the villages and the landscape changed in the last two centuries. Providing an anthology of plans and planning methods, it illustrates how urbanism reflects history: the ambitions, concepts, dreams and visions not only of the designers and planners, but also of the institutions and individuals who were their patrons. Focusing on the Netherlands, the story the book tells is totally embedded in its international setting. Forces from outside - political and economic realities, ideas and concepts - always had a huge impact on a country that from its very origin acted on, and was influenced by, the global theater.