Search

The global health crisis due to the pandemic of the SARS‐CoV‐2 is associated with processes of urbanisation and globalisation. Globally well‐connected areas with high population densities are hence expected to be disproportionately affected by COVID‐19. This paper investigates the role of population density within the Netherlands, comparing hospitalisation and mortality related to COVID‐19 across municipalities. The paper finds that infections, hospitalisation and mortality related to COVID‐19 are not clearly correlated with the population density or urbanity of the municipality, also when controlling for age and public health factors. The paper concludes that while the public debate stresses the elevated risk of infections in cities, due to transgressive behaviour, the evidence in this paper suggests that the geography of the epidemic in the Netherlands is more complex. It speculates that the variation in urbanisation in most of the country might just be too small to expect significant differences., This paper investigate the role of population density within the Netherlands, comparing hospitalization and mortality related to COVID‐19 across municipalities. It concludes that while scientific evidence expects an elevated risk of infections in large global cities, and Dutch public debate strongly focuses on lack of compliance with social distancing measures in larger cities, this paper finds no evidence of population density being correlated with the incidence nor the mortality related to COVID‐19 It therefore suggests that, within the highly urbanized context of the Netherlands, the spatial patterns are more socially and politically than epidemiologically relevant.

Taking Jason Hackworth and Neil Smith’s seminal paper on the ‘changing state of gentrification’ as a starting point, this paper argues for a reconceptualization of state‐led gentrification to further our understanding of urban transformation. Rather than seeing the State as an extension of capital interests, we contend that class‐state relations may produce urban spaces through representative politics and State hegemonies. To illustrate, we present a brief historical and geographical overview of the transformation of Amsterdam from 1982 to 2015, based on policy documents, media reports, archival research, interviews and secondary literature, as well as social and electoral data at the neighbourhood level. As the gentrification frontier advanced and working class voting blocs diminished, new electoral politics took hold, which permitted a new middle class hegemony to institute policy and institutional changes to further push gentrification and capital interests, leading to subsequent waves of urban change.

This paper explores the changing culinary geograp hy of the Netherlands applying GIS methods.The changing location of Michelin star-rated restaurants in the period 1986–2016 is put into a context of the changing relations between urban centres and their suburbs as well as the Randstad and the rest of the country. This paper suggests that the changing culinary geography of the Net herlands is related to the re-emergence of larger cities, particularly of Amsterdam, associated with the rise of an urban middle class epitomised by processes of gentrification. High end award-winning restaurants are argued to be a useful lens to study the symbolic geography of place, which integrates economic and symbolic perspectives on spatial change.

Based on micro‐level administrative data this paper aims to identify the role of internal migration in shaping regional and inter‐urban contrasts in human capital stocks in the Netherlands. We follow birth cohort 1979 from age 16 until age 35 and compare spatial trajectories between university graduates(‐to‐be) and their lower educated peers. We conclude that, in a context of dominating rural‐to‐urban migration flows, the highest educated(‐to‐be) are more than others attracted to metropolitan core areas and the Randstad. Second, we aim to test whether this urban preference may be prompted by spatial variation in socio‐economic progression by comparing changes in the relative wage position of employees in different spatial settings. Metropolitan settings and the Randstad in general are found to function more than other regions as socio‐economic escalators during the first phase of the labour career. However, these effects appear to be equal among educational groups.

This paper focuses on mutual learning (learning by both involved parties) in Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch-Turkish municipal partnerships. This is particularly relevant as strengthening local governance is high on the agenda of both migrant source and destination countries and the body of knowledge on mutual learning in municipal partnerships is limited. After describing the national and local policy context, the paper presents an analysis of knowledge exchanges and learning at the level of local government and other society actors in the Netherlands, Turkey and Morocco. The results show that involved actors in the three countries learned in different ways within these partnerships. The international exchanges also helped strengthening connections between local government and non-governmental actors in the involved countries. The potential for mutual learning was however not fully utilised due to the absence of clear learning strategies, existing language barriers and the lack of strategic involvement of other actors.

During the last decade, in many European countries and cities, area-based Urban Development Programmes have been initiated, in response to major problems of poverty and social exclusion. Urban Development Programmes are usually developed in a complex interplay between different governmental levels, and implemented by a wide variety of public and non-public parties. This paper addresses the organisation of these programmes, concentrating in particular on the form and extent of ‘public-public partnership’, i.e. on the role that the different levels of the public administration play, both through the administrative system and through policy-making. The ‘empirical’ basis for the paper consists of case studies, derived from the UGIS project (‘Urban Governance, Social Inclusion and Sustainability,’ a research project financed by the European Commission, DG RTD). The short analysis makes clear that both the model of public administration, in terms of the extent and form of decentralisation, and the presence (or lack) of a national policy framework determine the extent to which UDPs can be planned, approved and implemented at the local level. One of the main findings is that the central influence over UDPs depends more on the urban policy framework of the central government than on the model of public administration of a country. Countries with strong national (regional) urban policies, sufficient decentralisation of public administration to the municipal level and the use of governance methods at the local level open up possibilities for successful UDPs. Without upper-level urban policy frameworks UDPs might be successful as well, but their replicability and the control over their external effects will not be ensured.

This paper analyses the spatial distribution of seat capacity in the EU from 1990 to 2009 and sheds light on the contrasting results in the literature. It contributes to the debate on the deregulation and whether the rise of hub-and-spoke networks and the success of low-cost carriers lead to concentration or deconcentration. We use the Gini index and its decomposition to evaluate the contribution of airport subgroups and airline networks to the overall concentration of seat capacity. We conclude that, overall, seat capacity follows a spatial deconcentration pattern. While intra-EU seat capacity became more spatially deconcentrated, extra-EU seat capacity concentrated. However, our results do not support the general view that network carriers tend to increase concentration levels and low-cost carriers to decrease them, leading us to a reinterpretation of the impacts of air transport deregulation. The results show the increasing importance of foreign carriers and new strategies such as hub-bypassing.

Although we are steadily getting a better understanding of why regional population decline occurs, little is known about the causes of differentiated levels of decline between municipalities in the same region. In this paper we address the causes of intra-regional differentiation in decline in the Dutch region Southern-Limburg. The quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that in the 1900-1945 period, differentiation in population development was the result of economic boom and bust in the mining areas. After 1945 (except for 1985-1989) however, the economic argument lost much of its relevance: intra-regional differentiation has primarily been the result of intra-regional and international migration and these flows are steered predominantly by life course motives, the uneven spatial distribution of housing opportunities and access to these opportunities within the region.

With a comparably high degree of de-commodification in the urban housing market, Amsterdam has been long considered a prime example of a ‘European city’ and a ‘just city’. This paper looks at how the city's housing tenure sectors have changed since the 1990s due to neo-liberalisation processes and specifies effects for housing conditions of the poor. It highlights how restructuring has been driven by policy changes at different scales, and analyses the effects of reform on issues of accessibility and affordability. We identify a gap between insiders and outsiders, with affordability for the poor inside the system not yet deteriorating, but accessibility for poor outsiders emerging as a key problem. In the conclusion we speculate on future developments of the Amsterdam housing market and relate our findings to debates about the ‘European city’ and the ‘just city’.

Like many other governments, the Dutch government has simultaneously pursued the contradictory goals of liberalising the housing market and countering the concentration of low-income groups. This paper discusses how the tension between promoting market forces and countering segregation has played out, using Amsterdam as a case study. The findings suggest that the policy may have mitigated but did not prevent a deepening division between the city's increasingly privileged core and its periphery. This is at least in part because social mixing was pursued also in neighbourhoods already prone to gentrification.

This paper examines the return journeys of Indonesian migrant domestic workers to their home towns. When migrant workers return home, the Indonesian government sets them apart from other travellers in order to protect the migrants from extortion in the airport environment, and assist them during their return to their home villages. We investigate how this separate passage results in a mobility regime that produces differences between regular travellers and migrant worker travellers, and between male and female migrant workers. We also examine how the mobility regime results in particular forms of control over and safety of migrant workers' mobility. In doing so, we argue that the politics of mobility not only can be studied at the scale of global circuits, or at nodes such as the workplace, but also in relation to the actual journeys that migrant workers make.

This paper examines the return journeys of Indonesian migrant domestic workers to their home towns. When migrant workers return home, the Indonesian government sets them apart from other travellers in order to protect the migrants from extortion in the airport environment, and assist them during their return to their home villages. We investigate how this separate passage results in a mobility regime that produces differences between regular travellers and migrant worker travellers, and between male and female migrant workers. We also examine how the mobility regime results in particular forms of control over and safety of migrant workers' mobility. In doing so, we argue that the politics of mobility not only can be studied at the scale of global circuits, or at nodes such as the workplace, but also in relation to the actual journeys that migrant workers make.

All over Europe conference and exposition centres are being renovated and extended. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework to analyse these developments. It does so from a historical institutionalist perspective by employing path dependency arguments. However, after an analysis of past and present of exhibition centres in Europe, it is found that this theory contains some omissions which make them less suitable for the analysis of such large scale urban projects. To correct these omissions, a multidimensional view to path dependency, consisting of four different dimensions is proposed. This framework looks at path dependency within and between the dimensions of form, function, spatial embeddedness and institutional setting. It is argued that corresponding developments in all four dimensions lead to path dependent development, while divergence from this correspondence in one of these dimensions leads to a critical juncture. From this analytical framework a typology of exhibition centre development is derived.

The paper describes and analyses the successive geographical distributions of places where multilateral treaties have been signed over the life course of the state system. A large proportion of all negotiations occurred in just a few places and the collection of most frequently selected places shows considerable continuity over time. Treaty-making emerges as more of a secular trend than a cyclical pulse, being insignificantly impacted by economic cycles, and inconsistently impacted by hegemonic cycles. The work presents a measure of specialisation that helps to identify types of central venues in the multilateral treaty-making system. The actual selection of specific venues suggests functional and political considerations to have been most important. The sustained preference for national political centres expresses the importance of such considerations, while the actual choice of a venue in a specific case can be highly contingent.

The number of inhabitants of the four largest Dutch cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, has stabilised since the mid-1980s. This stability in population size, however, hides considerable dynamics in population composition, especially regarding ethnicity, household type and socio-economic status. In this paper, we focus on the influence of international migration and residential migration flows on changing ethnic population structure. A selective residential outflow of natives and influx of foreigners, together with higher natural growth of ethnic minority groups, have contributed to very fast changes in ethnic composition of the four largest Dutch cities. The latest national population forecasts of Statistics Netherlands in December 2004 indicate an ongoing influx of foreign population groups into the Netherlands for the decades to come, despite the recent more restrictive immigration policy. One can expect from this a continuous international migration towards the large Dutch cities in particular. If the observed trend in native outflow continues, the foreign city population will soon cross the 50 per cent mark.

This paper addresses the role of the Internet in global collective action through an analysis of the scale practices of the Indymedia network. Indymedia is a worldwide network of interlinked websites run by volunteers organised in local Independent Media Centres (IMCs). These websites, a global site at http://www.indymedia.org and over one hundred local sites, are meant to empower activists groups by providing them with a media platform. The case study focuses on the role of the Internet in four facets of collective action: grievances and alternatives, organisation, mobilisation and identities. The analysis deals more specifically with scales, examining scaling practices in the light of three scale metaphors (scale as level, scale as size, scale as relation). While scales are also framed as bounded areas (territorial communities to be served) and as levels when targeting specific government agencies, the prevailing scale frame is that of a network of scales in which the local and the global mutually constitute each other.

Hub-and-spoke networks of airlines create entry barriers at large hub airports. As a result, deregulation does not necessary lead to more competition. In this paper, airline competition at European airports in the 1990s is analysed. Results show important differences between airports, which are related to size and geography. At most airports, competition increased with the successful entrance of new competitors. Yet, competition decreased at hub airports and at airports in the northern periphery in Europe.

This paper examines the spatial transformation of the city from children’s point of view. Three important daily living domains – children’s outdoor play spaces, leisure centres and caring institutions – are examined. Empirical findings are made from studies in Amsterdam, where new urban developments affecting children are most apparent in the Netherlands. Conclusions show that developments are both diverse and paradoxical. On the one hand, we see processes that progressively contribute towards the exclusion of children from urban public space. Safety considerations underpin these processes heavily. Children’s marginal position in the public domain is further reinforced in the planning and design of new residential areas. Children do not seem to be a factor that merits consideration. On the other hand, never before has so much attention been paid to children. Adults’ efforts to give due consideration to children’s position lead to the creation of many new domains especially created for children. These give children a ‘face’ in the city, but these spaces are characterised by privatisation, institutionalisation and segregation. In the context of the Netherlands it is not altogether clear what shape the future will take, but it seems to be most likely that indicated developments will continue.

Over the past few years, parties on the extreme right of the political spectrum have drawn a surprisingly large number of votes in elections throughout Western Europe, and surprisingly often. What these parties have in common is their aversion to ‘foreigners’, by which they mean anyone who hails from another country. This paper considers whether the presence of foreigners in the immediate surroundings of people's homes is a factor in their decision to cast their vote for any of these parties. It is based on an analysis of data on two elections held in Amsterdam in 1994. The analysis reveals that the presence of Moroccans and Turks, two population groups that are associated with an Islamic lifestyle, in the immediate surroundings of the home actually does increase the support for parties on the extreme right. In contrast, the presence of people from Surinam or the Antilles does not have that effect, while the presence of foreigners from other countries does not have that effect at all.