Love thy neighbor? Remnants of the social-mix policy in the Kolenkit neighborhood, Amsterdam
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Love thy neighbor? Remnants of the social‑mix policy in the Kolenkit neighborhood, Amsterdam Yasin Bektaş1 · Tuna Taşan‑Kok2 Received: 13 February 2019 / Accepted: 9 January 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In the mid-1990s, one of the main objectives of housing policy in the Netherlands was to stimulate the integration of diverse socio-economic groups through housing strategies, with the goal being to create social cohesion and to address the problems encountered in low-income neighborhoods. Existing literature has studied the impact of social mix policies and policy interventions, concentrating on such outcomes as the spatial consequences of these policies in post-war neighborhoods; macro scale transformations in social mix areas; or shared perceptions of community in gentrifying neighborhoods. Taking a different perspective, this paper studies the impact of such policies at the individual interaction level to assess whether social mix policies can lead to new forms of interaction between the existing residents and newcomers, and consequently, to further cohesion in the area or city from a broader perspective. The paper studies the interaction between new and former neighbors inside out in a special area, Amsterdam Nieuw West neighborhood, Kolenkitbuurt Zuidelijk Veld 1–2, which is recognized as being one of the most deprived neighborhoods in the country. The research of the Kolenkitbuurt case shows clearly that social interactions between the Dutch-Turkish and the new native Dutch residents have been limited to more casual or neither positive nor negative interactions. Keywords Amsterdam · Housing policy · Social mix · Social interaction · Social housing
1 Introduction This paper critically approaches the idea of using ‘social mix’ policy instruments to facilitate better social interactions between diverse individuals and groups, by providing empirical evidence based on individuals’ contacts with their old and new neighbors in a revitalized Amsterdam neighborhood. In the mid-1990s, one of the main objectives of housing * Yasin Bektaş [email protected] 1
Department of City and Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Erciyes University, P.O. Box 38280, 104 Kayseri, Turkey
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Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 15629, 1001 NC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Y. Bektaş, T. Taşan‑Kok
policy in the Netherlands was to stimulate the integration of diverse socio-economic groups through social cohesion strategies to address the problems of spatially concentrated lowincome households in disadvantaged urban districts. The resulting operational instruments sought to house immigrant and non-immigrant groups alongside each other in rented social housing, but within a decade the strategies proved to be not too successful (Van Kempen and Bolt 2009). Although different types of space1 are very crucial for encounters among different groups (Piekut and Valentine 2017), Dutch
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