This polder of 54 000 ha was dyked and drained from 1950 to 1957. Its land was intended for agriculture, for fields and woods and is dotted with farms and barns, canals, wide and straight roads and dykes. Since 1960, towns and villages have sprouted there like mushrooms: Lelystad, Dronten, Swifterbant, Biddinghuizen. Some lakes serve as regulators, like the Veluwemeer which separates the polder from the old coast, and have become leisure lakes.