This book seeks to understand the urban transformation of Amsterdam over a 40-year period. In addition to charting social and economic changes associated with gentrification, it analyses the electoral dynamics and middle-class politics that have underpinned Amsterdam’s change to a middle-class city.
Author(s): Willem Boterman, Wouter van Gent
Series: The Contemporary City
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 257
City: Cham
Preface and Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Explanations for Urban Transformation
1.3 The Socio-Political Cycle of Urban Transformation
Class, Politics and the Production of Urban Space
1.4 Outline of this Book
2: Class, State and Urban Space
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Social Class in Context
Social Class in the Netherlands
Defining the Middle Class Today
An Emergent Professional Middle Class
2.3 Spatializing Class, Classes in Space
2.4 Urban Transformation and Social Class
Urban Space as Constitutive of Class
2.5 Class, State and Space
2.6 Two Mechanisms of Urban Transformation
Institutional Politics: Policy Regimes and Elections
Symbolic Politics
2.7 The Socio-Political Cycle of Amsterdam’s Transformation
3: Social and Spatial Transformations
3.1 Amsterdam Diversifying and Gentrifying
3.2 Demographic Change
3.3 Ethnic Change
3.4 Economic Change
3.5 Social Class Change
Disappearing Working Class
Rise of the New Urban Middle Class
Income Developments
Regional Dynamics
3.6 Neighbourhood Transformations in Amsterdam
Early Gentrification: The 1980s and Before
Expanding Gentrification: 1990–2001
Ubiquitous Gentrification: 2001–2009
Post 2009: Transformations in the Wake of the Crisis
3.7 New Spatial Inequalities
3.8 Conclusions
4: The Electoral Geography of Amsterdam
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Dutch Political Landscape
4.3 Class-Based Voting and Spatial Polarisation
4.4 The New Middle-Class Vote(s)
4.5 General Electoral Patterns in the Netherlands and Amsterdam
4.6 Electoral Dynamics in the City Until 1989
4.7 Electoral Dynamics in the City 1989–1998
4.8 Electoral Dynamics in the 2000s
4.9 Local Elections and Political Dynamics in the City 2010–2012
4.10 Trends in Electoral Geographies 1980–2012
4.11 Conclusions
5: Political and Institutional Transformations
5.1 Introduction
5.2 A Red Past: Urban Politics Until 1988
Representational Politics: PvdA Rule
Social Housing City
Compact City and Nascent Gentrification
5.3 Third Way City: Housing Market Liberalisation in the 1990s
Party Politics 1989–1995
National Housing Policies
Changing Political Landscape and New Urban Policies 1994–2002
The ‘Discovery’ of the New Middle Class
5.4 Revanchism and Urban Boosterism: Amsterdam 2002–2008
New National Political Landscapes
Amsterdam’s Revanchist Interlude 2002–2006
Return to Red-Green Coalitions
5.5 Post-Crisis Amsterdam (2009–2018)
Institutional Restructuring in the Wake of the Crisis (2009–2013)
Post-Crisis Housing Framework
Post-Crisis Boom 2014–2016
2016–2018: A New Direction?
5.6 Conclusion
6: Symbolic Politics Within the Local State
6.1 Undivided City: Social and ‘Middle-Segment’ Housing
6.2 Shaping the City in One’s Mirror Image
The Gentrification Debate
Displacement
6.3 Neighbourhood Transformation Through Symbolic Politics
Renewal Policies
Networks of Neighbourhood Organisation
Middle-Class Representations and Practices
Residents’ Perspectives
Middle-Class Politics in Van der Pekbuurt
6.4 Conclusion
7: Conclusion
7.1 Social and Spatial Transformations
7.2 Changing Electorates and Repositioning Parties
7.3 Political Transformation: Institutional and Symbolic Middle-Class Politics
The Middle-Class Project
A New Way of Looking at the City
7.4 Expanding Our Understanding of the Middle-Class City
7.5 Beyond Amsterdam: Three Theoretical Implications
7.6 Future Transformations
Overview Maps
Bibliography
Data Sources
Index
