In 2025, 1.2 million people lived in one of the twenty urban focus areas of the National Program for Livability and Safety. They have more than twice as often low financial prosperity as the total population. Residents of the focus area The Hague Southwest most often have low financial prosperity, while in Nieuwegein Central Axis proportionally the fewest people live with low prosperity. This is evident from research by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) into prosperity, crime, and health in urban focus areas.

In 2022, the cabinet designated twenty urban focus areas that receive extra attention and resources to improve livability and safety. In 2025, 6.6 percent of the population (1.2 million people) lived in these areas. Rotterdam-South is the largest focus area with 215 thousand inhabitants, Vlaardingen Westwijk the smallest with 14 thousand.

Residents focus areas, 1 January 2025
  

Many new and departing residents

The influx of new residents is large in the focus areas compared to other neighborhoods of the same municipalities. On average, 8.9 percent of the residents living in a focus area at the beginning of 2025 had moved there in 2024. In the other neighborhoods of the respective municipalities, this was on average 6.8 percent. The outflow is also proportionally large: on average, 8.7 percent of the residents living in a focus area at the beginning of 2024 moved out in 2024. In the other neighborhoods of these municipalities, this is 6.5 percent.

For most focus areas, the population has increased over the past ten years. This growth was roughly in line with that in the other neighborhoods of the respective municipalities.

In The Hague Southwest most residents with low prosperity

In the focus areas, proportionally many people live with low income and assets. Of the residents aged 12 years or older who lived in a focus area on 1 January 2025, 12.6 percent had low financial prosperity in 2024. That is more than twice as much as the total population (5.4 percent). Residents of The Hague Southwest most often have low prosperity at 18.2 percent. Also in Groningen-North, Utrecht Overvecht, Arnhem-East, and Rotterdam-South this percentage is high compared to other focus areas. In Nieuwegein Central Axis – of the twenty focus areas – the fewest people live with low prosperity.

Between 2015 and 2025, the percentage of people with low prosperity gradually decreased in focus areas such as Schiedam Nieuwland and East, Lelystad East, and Amsterdam Southeast. As a result, this percentage came closer to that of the other neighborhoods of the respective municipalities during this period in many focus areas.

Other neighborhoods