How we calculate
Every grade on this site comes from the same calculation. No editors who ‘know’ neighbourhoods, no gut feeling — only public data, applied to all 14,000+ neighbourhoods in exactly the same way.
The five pillars
We measure every neighbourhood on five pillars. For each underlying figure we determine where the neighbourhood stands relative to all other Dutch neighbourhoods (a percentile), and weigh those positions per pillar:
- Safety — registered crimes per 1,000 people present (police, 2025). The denominator counts residents plus business establishments (×3), because shops, offices and nightlife attract visitors that plain per-resident figures ignore — otherwise every city centre looks more dangerous than it is for its residents. Violent crime and burglary weigh heaviest.
- Amenities — distance to supermarket, GP, primary and secondary school, childcare, train station, hospital, cafés and restaurants, library and cinema (CBS).
- Housing — mainly the average property value (WOZ): what people are willing to pay is the most honest measure of how sought-after a neighbourhood is. Plus: owner-occupancy, vacancy, new construction and occupancy.
- Social & income — income per resident, high and low incomes, employment, education level and welfare dependency.
- Nature & quiet — distance to parks, forest and open nature, plus population and building density.
From position to grade
The overall grade weighs the pillars as follows: amenities 25%, housing 25%, safety 20%, social & income 20%, nature & quiet 10%. National positions translate to a Dutch school grade between 2.5 and 10: the median neighbourhood gets about a 6.3, the top a 10, the bottom a 2.5. A ‘6’ here simply means: an average Dutch neighbourhood.
Small neighbourhoods
In a neighbourhood of 300 residents, a single burglary can double the statistics. We therefore pull crime rates of small neighbourhoods towards the national average (empirical-Bayes shrinkage), so that luck — good or bad — in a small area doesn’t produce extreme numbers. Neighbourhoods with fewer than 50 residents are excluded from the comparison; industrial areas and water are excluded from rankings.
What this is not
A low grade does not mean a neighbourhood is unliveable, and a 9+ doesn’t mean you’ll be happy there. The weighting is a choice — a reasonable one, but a choice. Prefer urban buzz over greenery? Use the map filters or the neighbourhood finder; they calculate with your preferences.
Sources
- CBS (Statistics Netherlands) — neighbourhood key figures 2025
- Police / CBS — registered crimes per neighbourhood, 2025
- CBS/Kadaster — neighbourhood and district boundaries 2025
- PDOK Locatieserver — address search
Figures suppressed by CBS for privacy reasons (too few observations) are not counted. Last data update: July 2026.