neighbourhood in Heemskerk
De Citadel
2,945 residents · postal code 1967 · Part of Broekpolder, Heemskerk
Safe, but not spacious
De Citadel ranks among the three hundred best-scoring neighbourhoods in the country, and safety carries that: violence, burglary, property offences and criminal damage are all four below the national median, burglary at a mere fraction of it. A 9.8 on that pillar genuinely means little happens here, not that one category rescues the statistics.
The 8.9 for families is one of the rare kind where demography joins in rather than distance alone: more than half of households have children, with a primary school half a kilometre away.
What lags is quiet & nature, at a 4.5. Greenery around the neighbourhood sits near the national level, but the tree canopy stays well under half of it and noise is above. In a place where the entire housing stock was built after 2000, that is the component still to grow.
- no. 292 of 13,075 neighbourhoods with a grade
- no. 2 of 29 in Heemskerk
How De Citadel scores
Do some of these matter more to you than others?
Is De Citadel a safe neighbourhood?
For 2025, De Citadel comes out at 15 recorded crimes per 1,000 people present; the national middle is 24. That is low: De Citadel is among the 20% of Dutch neighbourhoods with the fewest recorded crimes.
The figures ⌄Safety
Registered crimes per 1,000 people present per year: residents plus business activity. Figures for small neighbourhoods are smoothed.
In 2025, 50 crimes were recorded here. The figures above are per 1,000 people present (residents + businesses).
Tick = Dutch median
The safest neighbourhoods in Heemskerk →The most dangerous neighbourhoods in Heemskerk →
The figures ⌄Amenities
Average distance to everyday amenities, compared with the Dutch median.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Wealth & income
What the homes are worth, what residents earn and how many homes stand empty. It describes the area, not the people living in it.
Not counted
Part of this score's subject, but not part of the grade.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Quiet & nature
How tightly the addresses sit together, how much noise there is, and how much green, trees and water surround it.
Not counted
Part of this score's subject, but not part of the grade.
Not part of the grade: air quality varies mostly between regions, barely between neighbourhoods within one municipality. WHO guideline: 5 µg/m³. Calculated annual mean, RIVM 2024.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Families
How practical this area is with children: distance to school and childcare, and how many children already live here.
Tick = Dutch median
Who lives here
De Citadel has strikingly few residents aged 65 and over: 11%, against 22% in the average Dutch neighbourhood.
Age profile
- 0–1519%
NL median 14%
- 15–2514%
NL median 11%
- 25–4523%
NL median 22%
- 45–6532%
NL median 28%
- 65+11%
NL median 22%
Share of residents per age group (CBS, 2025). All five bars share one scale, so their lengths can be compared with each other.
Average household size
2.6 — larger than average
NL median 2.3
Single-person households
24% — fewer than average
NL median 31%
Households with children
52% — far more than average
NL median 35%
Residents per km²
6,964 — far more densely populated than average
NL median 2,364
Tick = Dutch median. Households with children counts towards Families, population density towards Quiet & nature; the other figures here get no grade.
Frequently asked questions
Is De Citadel a safe neighbourhood?
For 2025, De Citadel comes out at 15 recorded crimes per 1,000 people present; the national middle is 24. That is low: De Citadel is among the 20% of Dutch neighbourhoods with the fewest recorded crimes. The figure is about what the police record, not about the people who live there.
How much crime is there in De Citadel?
In De Citadel the police recorded 50 crimes in 2025: theft, burglary, violence and vandalism combined. The comparison figure above (15 per 1,000) is not simply that count divided by the number of residents: we count residents plus workplaces, so a shopping street or station is not unfairly penalised, and for small counts we pull the figure towards the national average — otherwise a single incident would make a small neighbourhood look unsafe.
How is the grade for De Citadel calculated?
De Citadel scores 9.8 as its total score. That grade is a national position: we weigh five equally heavy scores — safety, amenities, wealth & income, quiet & nature and families — and see where De Citadel lands among every neighbourhood in the Netherlands. So it is not the mean of the five grades, but a place in the queue. All from open data published by CBS and the police.
The best and worst neighbourhoods of Heemskerk
Same total grade, same yardstick — from the top to the bottom of Heemskerk.
Highest grades
Lowest grades
More about this area
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