The Drechtsteden are a number of towns and cities bordering each other in the delta area of the rivers Oude Maas

Oude Maas

The Oude Maas is a distributary of the Rhine River, and a former distributary of the Maas River, in the Dutch province of South Holland. It begins at the city of Dordrecht where the Beneden Merwede river splits into the Noord River and the Oude Maas...

, Noord, and Beneden-Merwede in the province of South Holland

South Holland

South Holland is a province situated on the North Sea in the western part of the Netherlands. The provincial capital is The Hague and its largest city is Rotterdam.South Holland is one of the most densely populated and industrialised areas in the world...

, the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. They 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. 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
  Alblasserdam is a town in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of , of which is water. Alblasserdam is officially a part of the Drechtsteden...
  
  
• Dordrecht
  Dordrecht
  Dordrecht , colloquially Dordt, historically in English named Dort, is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, located in the province of South Holland. It is the fourth largest city of the province, having a population of 118,601 in 2009...
  
  
• Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht
  Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht
  Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands. It is located in the Dutch province of South Holland, on the island of IJsselmonde, and borders with Zwijndrecht, Ridderkerk, and the Noord River. The jurisdiction of the municipality covers an area of 11.99 km² of...
  
  
• Papendrecht
  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...
  
  
• Sliedrecht
  Sliedrecht
  Sliedrecht is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of ....
  
  
• Zwijndrecht

The name "Drechtsteden" was chosen because the name of several of the associated cities and towns ends in the suffix

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 or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

 "-drecht" (meaning: place where ships are pulled or carried across the land). It is also an informal name for the area. Nearby Barendrecht

Barendrecht

Barendrecht is a town in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality had a population of 43,104 in 2007, and covers an area of 21.72 km² of which 1.45 km² is water....

, a suburb of Rotterdam

Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...

, is not part of the association.