ABSTRACT
A well-known saying is “God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland”. It might be interpreted as a joke, but for a long time the Dutch seriously were considered to be able to create and control the territory of this country as well as the society. Especially in the 20th century, there seemed to be an ongoing success-story of constructing a territory of landscapes and cities, conquered from nature by reclaiming, draining, dredging, damming and embanking, and building a well organised and controlled welfare state. Urban planning and hydraulic engineering were considered as two important pillars of this policy, contributing to the idea of the Netherlands as a coherent nation. This coherence involved as well a societal as a territorial coherence.
