Amsterdam – About a hundred houses float on a lake in the Amsterdam neighbourhood of IJburg--a testament to how the Dutch are trying to turn their traditional enemy, water, into an ally against overcrowding.

"There is a lot of water in the Netherlands; it is used for navigation and recreation. We want to see if it can also be inhabited," Ton van Namen, director of real estate company Monteflore, told AFP.

Monteflore built more than half the floating homes off the western shore of the IJmeer lake, a dozen kilometres from the city centre.

The homes are cubic, with walls of plastic and untreated wood in neutral colours, built entirely with non-polluting materials. They take a few months to construct.

The first inhabitants of IJburg's floating houses arrived in 2008.

"We are in the experimental phase, but this may be the beginning of the solution to residential overcrowding," said Igor Roovers, director of a grouping created by the Amsterdam city council to manage the IJburg development—the biggest of its kind in Europe.

The Netherlands, with 16.5 million inhabitants, is the second most densely populated country in Europe with 400 people per square kilometre (0.4 square mile).

Roovers believes floating homes may also provide the solution to another growing problem: the risk of residential flooding from rising sea levels caused by global warming.

Nine million people in the Netherlands live in inland areas directly sheltered from the sea and rivers by dykes and dunes, and 65 percent of the national production capacity lies in flood-prone areas.

The IJburg houses rest on floating, concrete bases fixed to two solidly planted pillars to keep them stable, all the while allowing them to adjust to the water level.

The IJmeer lake and the bordering Markermeer have a combined 68,508-hectare (169,000-acre) surface, which could potentially hold thousands more floating homes, said Roovers. But current technology did not yet make this possible.

"If we float too many houses here, the sunlight will no longer be able to reach the water and the water life will disappear. Dead water gives off a terrible smell," he said.

"We have not yet been able to find a long-term solution to that."

Other Dutch municipalities, like Almere on a river just east of the IJmeer, and Leeuwarden, in the north, have also launched experimental floating house projects.

Martine Pauwels / AFP / Expatica

Photo credits: Floating homes at night by AFP;  IJburg by Metro Centric (Flickr.com, Creative Commons license)