Making the Middle-class City: The Politics of Gentrifying Amsterdam (The Contemporary City)

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. Willem Boterman & Wouter van Gent are Urban and Political Geographers at the department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 'How can we explain urban transformations of the past decades? Boterman and Van Gent take on the challenge to explain how and why Social-democratic Amsterdam became a middle-class city. They conceptualize the socio-political cycle of urban transformation to meticulously analyse the growth and growing domination of middle classes that has transformed politics, the local state and urban policies, and has undermined Amsterdam's quintessential social-redistributive characteristics. The book presents a terrific case study to bring to light the key processes that are reconfigurating European cities...and beyond.' -Professor Patrick le Gales (SciencePo, Paris) 'Making the Middle-Class City is the result of a ten-year long ambitious project linking social-economic restructuring, electoral and political shifts to housing, neighbourhood and city-wide transformations. The key innovation of the book is that Boterman and Van Gent demonstrate how the different changes add up to nothing less than the gentrification of not only the city but also of City Hall. They dissect how policy makers and bureaucrats embody middle-class interests and act upon those interests. The paradoxical result is a city that is increasingly unaffordable to both working- and middle-class households. This book speaks to current tensions in many cities: between different class interests, between tourism-led growth and housing affordability, and ultimately between social justice and neoliberalism. It will be required reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got there.' -Professor Manuel Aalbers (University of Leuven) 'A superb book that tells us what is distinctive about processes of gentrification in Amsterdam. Outs the peddling of 'soft gentrification' by a left-liberal Dutch state and evidences the hard edged impacts of this. The striking correlations between social and electoral change point to the possible futures of gentrifying and diversifying cities elsewhere in the world, beyond Amsterdam. An excellent addition to the gentrification studies literature.' - Professor Loretta Lees (Director of the Initiative on Cities, Boston University, USA) 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