Editing Zuiderzee Works (section)

====Southern Flevoland ====
Southern Flevoland (Zuidelijk Flevoland) was the fourth polder of the Zuiderzee Works, built adjacent to its larger sibling, Eastern Flevoland. Since its northeastern dike, the aforementioned Knardijk, already existed, only {{cvt|70|km}} of the dike remained to be built. Starting in early 1959, this was finished in October 1967.

Only one pumping station ('gemaal'), the diesel powered ''De Blocq van Kuffeler'', needed to be built because of the hydrological union of the two Flevolands; once the polder was finished it would simply join the previous three in maintaining the water-level of both polders. Before it could do that however the newest ''gemaal'' had to first drain the {{cvt|430|km2}} polder of its water all by itself, completing its job in May 1968.

Due to the geographically favourable location of the southern polder to the heavily urbanised centre of the Netherlands and in particular [[Amsterdam]], the planners devised a design that would include a large new urban area, to be called [[Almere]], in order to relieve the housing shortage and increasing overcrowding on the old land. Almere was to be divided into 3 major settlements, initially; the first, Almere-Haven (1976), situated along the [[Gooimeer]] (one of the peripheral lakes), the second and largest, Almere-Stad (''Almere City'') (1980), which was to fulfil the role of city centre, and the third, Almere-Buiten (1984), to the northeast towards Lelystad.

The area between Lelystad and Almere was designated for heavy industries, but since enough space was still available on the old land for those industries this part of the polder was left alone for the mean time. After only a couple of years this landscape of shallow pools, islets and swamps became a popular resting and foraging area for many species of waterfowl, to the extent that it rapidly turned into a nature reserve of national significance. Although accidental in origin, the ''[[Oostvaardersplassen]]'' as they are known became by the 1970s the definitive destination for this section of the polder.

The centre of the polder most closely resembles the pre-war polders in that it is almost exclusively agricultural. In contrast, the south-eastern part is dominated by extensive forests. It is also home to the only other settlement of the polder, [[Zeewolde]] (1984), again a more conventional town acting as the local centre. Zeewolde became a municipality at the same time as Almere, on 1 January 1984, which in the case of Zeewolde meant that the municipality existed before the town itself, with only farms in the surrounding land to be governed until the town started to grow.