Table Of ContentTHE CONTEMPORARY CITY
Making the
Middle-class City
The Politics of Gentrifying Amsterdam
Willem Boterman · Wouter van Gent
The Contemporary City
Series Editors
Richard Ronald
Geography, Planning and International
Development Studies
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Emma Baker
Centre for Housing, Urban and Regional Planning
University of Adelaide
Adelaide, Australia
In recent decades, cities have been variously impacted by neoliberalism,
economic crises, climate change, industrialization and post-
industrialization, and widening inequalities. So what is it like to live in
these contemporary cities? What are the key drivers shaping cities and
neighbourhoods? To what extent are people being bound together or
driven apart? How do these factors vary cross-culturally and cross nation-
ally? This book series aims to explore the various aspects of the contem-
porary urban experience from a firmly interdisciplinary and international
perspective. With editors based in Amsterdam and Adelaide, the series is
drawn on an axis between old and new cities in the West and East.
Willem Boterman • Wouter van Gent
Making the
Middle- class City
The Politics of Gentrifying Amsterdam
Willem Boterman Wouter van Gent
Department of Geography, Planning, and Department of Geography, Planning, and
International Development Studies International Development Studies
University of Amsterdam University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ISSN 2634-5463 ISSN 2634-5471 (electronic)
The Contemporary City
ISBN 978-1-137-57494-7 ISBN 978-1-137-55493-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55493-2
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Preface and Acknowledgements
Like many cities in Western Europe and North America in the past
40 years, the city of Amsterdam has undergone a profound social and
political transformation. It changed from a relatively poor city, governed
by a (radical) left-wing government to a city dominated by affluence and
marked by centrist liberal politics. Also in terms of public space and
housing development, the city is hardly recognizable. In a word, the last
decades saw the re-emergence of Amsterdam as a middle-class city. This
is not to say that the entire population is middle class, but that the city’s
politics and policies are dominated by middle-class interests, leading to
the production of classed urban space. This book seeks to understand
how this transformation could have taken place.
In 1984, or even in 1994, hardly anyone in Amsterdam could have
predicted the high levels of gentrification, marked by soaring housing
prices and affordability issues in the 2010s. This transformation was
never a foregone conclusion or a natural inevitability. It was a contingent
process that cannot be reduced to national and global processes alone, as
it has been very much a local affair too. While we take stock of higher-
scale processes (economic restructuring, national politics, (welfare) state
change), we are particularly interested in what has happened in the city:
in its neighbourhoods, in the representative local government and in the
local State. As geographers, we take a particular interest in urban context,
spatial processes and issues of scale, but this book is as much as an
v
vi Preface and Acknowledgements
outcome of personal fascination as academic curiosity. Wouter, like many
other young people, came to the city for studies when he was 18 -picking
a study to go along with his move to Amsterdam. Having settled in the
city, he became fascinated by how other newcomers would subtly claim
the city, implicitly -and sometimes explicitly- at the expense of long-term
residents, who would often have a migration background. To his surprise,
he would hear similar claiming when interviewing policy makers during
his PhD research. Willem was born and brought up in Amsterdam, and
has seen the city change in the past forty years. As the son of parents who
belong to the baby boomer generation who became Amsterdam’s first
gentrifiers, he grew up in one of the most profoundly transformed neigh-
bourhoods of the city. Bringing up three children in the city himself, he
became fascinated by the generational aspects of the social reproduction
of the middle classes in urban space.
Our paths crossed for the first time during our studies at the University
of Amsterdam and they ran parallel ever since. Throughout our working
careers we have been good friends and colleagues collaborating on various
projects, mainly focusing on our shared academic interest: the social and
spatial transformation of Amsterdam. As academics, we have been
engaged in public debates about the city and we have been giving (un)
solicited advice to politicians and policy makers. In our work and in our
lives we have been contributing to the legitimation and to the critique of
how Amsterdam has been developing. So, in a way, our research ques-
tions are a reflection of who we are. We are both subject and object of this
research: being professional middle class, Amsterdammers, and gentrifi-
ers ourselves
This book is the product of many years of research, discussion and
reflection, and we could not have completed it without the help of oth-
ers. During the research phase, we were assisted by Bas Boomstra, Patrick
van Son and Katie Brown, talented individuals, who helped with collect-
ing electoral and interview data. We would also like to acknowledge the
interviewees for talking to us, and sharing their views and thoughts. We
appreciate that Amsterdam municipal policymakers and planners are
socially-engaged individuals, who are willing to engage with academics
and academic work. Steve Russell performed an extensive language check.
Some of chapters are based on published work that received comments
Preface and Acknowledgements vii
by anonymous referees. These also acknowledge the help of Katrin
Anacker, Thea Dukes, Mai Thi Nguyen, David Varady, and Elvin Wyly.
We also thank Brian Doucet who kindly agreed to read our manuscript
and provided thoughtful suggestions for improvement.
Our research also was also hugely helped by (former) colleagues in
geography and planning at the University of Amsterdam. As our book
series editor and colleague, Richard Ronald, provided us with good advice
and encouragement. Myrte Hoekstra worked with us on the case study of
Van der Pekbuurt in Chap. 6 and helped us think through the politics
and their impacts there. Manuel Aalbers, Marco Bontje, Cody
Hochstenbach, Rivke Jaffe, Lia Karsten, Robert Kloosterman, Fenne
Pinkster, Pieter Terhorst, Justus Uitermark, and Aslan Zorlu have also
been very influential through their work and through our daily interac-
tions at the office. Justus, Cody and Rivke also provided valuable feed-
back on parts of the manuscript. Going by citations, Sako Musterd, our
former teacher and promotor, has perhaps been the most influential per-
son in shaping this study. This book builds on his work on welfare state
restructuring and urban inequality, and it benefits from the intellectual
environment that he has been part of and helped to create.
We owe all these fine and talented individuals a huge debt of gratitude.
More so, we would like to thank our friends and family for keeping us
sane and for enriching our daily lives in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands Willem Boterman
Wouter van Gent
Contents
1 I ntroduction 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Explanations for Urban Transformation 3
1.3 Th e Socio-Political Cycle of Urban Transformation 5
1.4 Outline of this Book 9
2 Class, State and Urban Space 13
2.1 Introduction 13
2.2 Social Class in Context 15
2.3 S patializing Class, Classes in Space 22
2.4 Urban Transformation and Social Class 25
2.5 Class, State and Space 29
2.6 Two Mechanisms of Urban Transformation 34
2.7 Th e Socio-Political Cycle of Amsterdam’s Transformation 42
3 S ocial and Spatial Transformations 43
3.1 Amsterdam Diversifying and Gentrifying 43
3.2 Demographic Change 45
3.3 Ethnic Change 49
3.4 Economic Change 53
3.5 Social Class Change 56
3.6 Neighbourhood Transformations in Amsterdam 64
ix
x Contents
3.7 New Spatial Inequalities 73
3.8 Conclusions 75
4 The Electoral Geography of Amsterdam 77
4.1 Introduction 77
4.2 The Dutch Political Landscape 80
4.3 Class-Based Voting and Spatial Polarisation 84
4.4 The New Middle-Class Vote(s) 86
4.5 G eneral Electoral Patterns in the Netherlands and
Amsterdam 87
4.6 E lectoral Dynamics in the City Until 1989 90
4.7 E lectoral Dynamics in the City 1989–1998 93
4.8 E lectoral Dynamics in the 2000s 95
4.9 L ocal Elections and Political Dynamics in the City
2010–2012 97
4.10 Trends in Electoral Geographies 1980–2012 99
4.11 Conclusions 103
5 P olitical and Institutional Transformations 105
5.1 Introduction 105
5.2 A Red Past: Urban Politics Until 1988 107
5.3 Th ird Way City: Housing Market Liberalisation in the
1990s 113
5.4 R evanchism and Urban Boosterism: Amsterdam
2002–2008 124
5.5 Post-Crisis Amsterdam (2009–2018) 133
5.6 Conclusion 143
6 Symbolic Politics Within the Local State 145
6.1 U ndivided City: Social and ‘Middle-Segment’ Housing 147
6.2 S haping the City in One’s Mirror Image 154
6.3 Neighbourhood Transformation Through Symbolic
Politics 163
6.4 Conclusion 177
