Stadskanaal — Stadskanaal Map Poster & Print

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Stadskanaal Map Poster & Print

Stadskanaal takes its name from the waterway at its centre. The canal was dug to carry peat out of the moors of eastern Groningen, and the town grew along both banks instead of around a square or a church. From above, this gives it an unusual outline. It is long and narrow, with one straight line of water and a street on each side, stretching far beyond what a town of this size usually covers.

Away from the canal, the map shows the layers of later growth. Housing estates from the twentieth century fill the space behind the old canal-side ribbon, with curving residential streets and small greens. Around them, the reclaimed land is divided into long, regular fields, and their parallel field boundaries repeat the direction of the canal. The whole area is flat, so drainage lines and roads set the pattern, not hills or rivers.

A Stadskanaal map poster shows this plainly. There is one strong axis, a series of bridges crossing it at intervals, and neighbourhoods set out on either side like branches from a stem. The town is also home to a heritage railway that runs historic trains on an old local line, one of the things visitors from elsewhere in the Netherlands know it for. In black and white, the linear plan is easy to read.