The Drechtsteden (; Dutch for "Drecht cities") are a number of towns and cities bordering each other in the delta area of the rivers

Oude Maas The Oude Maas (; en, Old Meuse) is a distributary of the river Rhine, and a former distributary of the river Maas, in the Dutch province of South Holland. It begins at the city of Dordrecht where the Beneden Merwede river splits into the Noo ...

, Noord, and

Beneden-Merwede The Beneden Merwede () is a stretch of river in the Netherlands, mainly fed by the river Rhine. It starts as the continuation of the Boven Merwede after the branching-off of the Nieuwe Merwede ship canal. It flows from Hardinxveld-Giessendam to Do ...

in the province of

South Holland South Holland ( nl, Zuid-Holland ) is a province of the Netherlands with a population of over 3.7 million as of October 2021 and a population density of about , making it the country's most populous province and one of the world's most densely ...

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. These cooperate in the ''Gemeenschappelijke Regeling Drechtsteden'' ("joint arrangement Drechtsteden"), which performs common tasks for the municipalities in the field of economy, development, culture, and social assistance.Drechtsteden
/ref> Collectively, a little more than 250,000 people call one of the towns and cities of Drechtsteden home. The associated towns and cities are: *

Alblasserdam Alblasserdam () is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. It covers an area of , of which is water, and has a population of as of . Alblasserdam is officially a part of the Drechtsteden region. A po ...

Dordrecht Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a city and municipality in the Western Netherlands, located in the province of South Holland. It is the province's fifth-largest city after ...

* Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht *

Papendrecht Papendrecht () is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland, at the crossing of the River Beneden Merwede and the Noord River. The municipality had a population of in and covers an area of of which ...

* Sliedrecht * Hardinxveld-Giessendam * Zwijndrecht The name "Drechtsteden" was chosen because the name of several of the associated cities and towns ends in the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

''-drecht'' (meaning: place where ships are pulled or carried across the landNederlands etymologisch woordenboek, J. de Vries, Leiden, 1997, 4th Ed., , p. 133). It is also an informal name for the area.

References

External links

{{Wikivoyage, Alblasserwaard-Drechtsteden Regions of South Holland Regions of the Netherlands