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Risk of 'no-go' areas emerging in Amsterdam

Amsterdam’s poorest district need urgent investment to stop them degenerating into ‘no-go’ areas, a new academic study has warned.

The poorest neighbourhoods are increasingly becoming transit camps for new migrants, with dilapidated housing, poor social connections, rising crime and diminishing opportunities.

Those who gain any kind of success quickly move out, to be replaced new waves of temporary residents, creating a vicious-circle effect, according to Han Entzinger, a senior lecturer in migration and integration studies at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University.

‘Unless we want to leave these areas to their fate, there is every reason to invest heavily in the quality of housing and the built environment to ensure that regulations are adhered to, but also in order to invest in citizenship, education and the provision of facilities in the areas of health, sport and welfare,’ Entzinger writes.

Entinzger warned that without concentrated investment, ‘important areas’ of Amsterdam and Rotterdam ‘may well slip back into becoming no-go areas for the rest of the cities’ populations’.

Entzinger has written the report, Amsterdam-Rotterdam: The State of Integration, together with Paul Scheffer, senior lecturer in European studies at Tilburg University.

It is due to be presented at the Integrating Cities 2012 conference in Amsterdam, which is taking place on Thursday and Friday of this week.

Source: AT5: 'No-goareas' bedreigen Amsterdam

Photo by Roel Wijnants

See also: Integrating Cities 2012