ABSTRACT

The city of Utrecht counts 265,000 inhabitants, and is thus the fourth largest city of The Netherlands after Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague. Utrecht is at the centre of a conurbation (Utrecht’s urban regions) of approximately half a million inhabitants, while the larger Province of Utrecht territory includes more than 1. 1 million inhabitants. The population of the city reached its height at the end of the 1960s, at 280,000. After that, it fell to some 230,000 by the end of the 1980s, and has increasing since then. Approximately 70,000 Utrecht residents work and live in the city, whereas the rest of the city’s workforce is employed elsewhere. More than 120,000 workers come to the city every day as commuters. However, Utrecht is a meeting place for different population groups. As in the other major Dutch cities, the number of residents of foreign descent is increasing. The largest ethnic groups are Moroccans (nearly 8.7 per cent of the total population), Turks (4.7 per cent), and the Surinamese (2.8 per cent). The city hosts the largest concentration of students in The Netherlands, about 50,000 students, a large part of whom lives temporarily or permanently in the city.