Red light gentrification in Soho, London and De Wallen, Amsterdam
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Red light gentrification in Soho, London and De Wallen, Amsterdam Marthe Singelenberg1 · Wouter van Gent1 Received: 7 February 2019 / Accepted: 21 May 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Many European city centres have seen increasing investment in the last decades, and policies have targeted centrally-located red light districts in particular for regeneration and clean-up. The literature tends to discuss these interventions and the associated social changes in terms of state-led gentrification. While such a classification may serve critical inquiry, we argue that the use of the concept may also entail certain assumptions regarding the future of these areas: their eventual demise as diverse areas with sex-related economic activities. Through a qualitative study of long-term residents, visitors and entrepreneurs in Soho, London and De Wallen, Amsterdam, we highlight how different changes are experienced depending on a person’s positioning. We also identify how locals exert some control over how these processes play out. The outcome, for the time being, has been a continuation of red light activities, albeit modified and adapted to the preferences of new residents, visitors, large investors and the state. For these reasons, we argue that the process and its outcomes should be understood as a distinct mode of neighbourhood change, namely ‘red light gentrification’. Our conceptualisation of gentrification as a locally embedded process demonstrates that the outcomes of state and market pressures are more contingent on local context than ideal-typical or policy-based understandings allow. Keywords Amsterdam · Displacement · Gentrification · London · Prostitution · Red light district · Urban policy Red light districts (RLDs) have always been paradoxical urban areas; they have been marginalised and romanticised, avoided and frequented, opposed and cherished. They are spaces of banal consumption, but also ‘exalted spaces’ and ‘landscapes of excitement and ecstasy’ (Burgers 2000, p.151). In recent decades, however, their existence has progressively come under threat. As cities have increasingly become centres of capital accumulation (Smith 1996; Zukin et al. 2016), RLDs, which are often associated with sexual * Wouter van Gent [email protected] Marthe Singelenberg [email protected] 1
Urban Geographies, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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exploitation, immorality and criminality, represent an eyesore for municipalities. Cities such as Hong Kong, Taipei, Montreal and Antwerp have instituted policies aimed at transforming their RLDs by, among other things, limiting the number of sexually-oriented businesses and investing in real estate (Cheng 2016). These policies have been criticised as attempts to ‘clean up’ RLDs, removing ‘undesirables’ to make way for new investments, middle class residents and new consumption spaces (Hubbard 2004; Sanders-McDonagh
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