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In The Netherlands, post-war urban renewal policies have emerged under the influence of various welfare regimes. Corporatist and social democratic regimes promoted social justice, social cohesion, inclusion and redistribution of income; urban renewal policies stimulated social mix and area-based interventions. Both public and market partners and residents were involved. Liberal ideas became increasingly explicit from the 1990s, and became dominant after 2010. Individuality, 'citizens own responsibility', and cuts in public services were leading objectives. Private investors and entrepreneurs were leading the renewal, facilitated by the state. In this paper we focus on the most recent policies and their effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many Western European cities politicians express concerns about the lack of integration of immigrants from the so-called less-developed countries. A core issue in the debate is the relationship between the residential segregation of ethnic minorities and integration or assimilation processes. This paper deals with the relationship between segregation and integration in the context of two opposing visions in the debate in the Netherlands. Empirical evidence is presented on both the level of segregation and the indicators of integration as well as the relation between the two. A major conclusion is that the relationship between segregation and integration suffers from too much political and too little scholarly attention. Politicians focus too much on large-scale spatial social engineering projects. The empirical evidence shown in this paper provides support for more policy attention in the domains of education and labour market access. Policies in these fields have had much more positive effects in the past than many want us to believe. It is underlined that education appears to be a key factor for successful integration, both in socio-economic terms and in social and cultural terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current Dutch urban policy has opted for a focused approach to solve urban social problems. The Minister of ‘Housing, Neighbourhoods and Integration’ aims at tackling social deprivation and liveability problems in a limited number of neighbourhoods. Several assumptions underpin the policy ambitions: e.g., a strong interrelationship between social deprivation and liveability; a clear social and spatial divide in Dutch society; and extra negative effects of problem accumulation. In this paper, these assumptions are tested. It is concluded that the two types of problems are in fact unrelated; targeting a limited number of neighbourhoods does not effectively address social deprivation. Furthermore, there is yet insufficient research to support the idea that there would be extra negative effects associated with an accumulation of social deprivation and liveability problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban renewal policies in The Netherlands already have a long history, which is characterised by varying attention for either smaller-scale (neighbourhood) or larger-scale (city) issues, and for either physical, social or economic questions. These variations run parallel with more general discourses on urban dynamics and perceptions of processes in (urban) society at large. In this paper the recent history of urban renewal policies will be briefly sketched, including their main orientations. Recent Big Citie Policies, currently in the third generation, will receive special attention and the actual policy discourse will be critically evaluated and confronted with some essential empirical findings. In this process, the Dutch policy on integrated urban renewal shows clear parallels with the experience in other Western European countries, demonstrating that a Western European paradigm of urban policies is in the making: integrated, area-based, with involvement of both public and market partners and residents. Nevertheless, the Dutch case is more outspoken than the approaches in other Western European countries, by paying more attention to the issue of social cohesion or integration and to the promotion of social mix as a solution for a lack of social cohesion in neighbourhoods. At the same time it is clear that this new paradigm of urban policies shows the characteristics of a discourse that is not based on research and on empirical facts, but that develops its own momentum from shared beliefs regarding the nature of urban problems and the appropriate policy responses. This new paradigm needs reconsideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many European urban regions have experienced a transformation from a compact monocentric toward a less compact polycentric urban region since the 1960s. The debate on emerging polycentricity in Europe so far tends to be more theoretical than analytical. The trend toward increasingly polycentric urban regions is meanwhile beyond dispute, but the effects of this transformation on urban regions and their components have only been explored to a limited extent. Are the "old" central cities only losing people, functions, and status to the new urban centers, or do these centers complement each other and specialize in terms of economic activities and population composition? This article presents evidence for the Amsterdam urban region regarding population distribution, selective migration, job growth, and economic specializations of the region's subcenters. It will become clear from our data that the Amsterdam urban region has indeed become more polycentric, but also that Amsterdam has managed to remain a vital center. The newer and older urban subcenters have become increasingly important, but rather than competing with Amsterdam, they develop in a complementary way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban poverty in Western countries is usually defined in terms of social exclusion and integration. Welfare states can be characterized according to three modes of integration, namely market exchange, redistribution and reciprocity. This paper compares the mechanisms of the social integration of unemployed single mothers with those of unemployed men. In two deprived neighbourhoods in Amsterdam, unemployed single mothers and unemployed native-born men were interviewed about their coping strategies with respect to the labour market, social security institutions and social networks. Although the single mothers have serious financial problems, they are better integrated into society at large than the unemployed men are. The single mothers are strongly oriented towards the labour market, successful in getting support from the social security institutions, have strong and supportive social networks, and are integrated into their neighbourhoods. In the conclusion we challenge the idea of vulnerable single mothers and demonstrate the relatively successful integration of this category of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Segregation is a central concept in both academic and policy debates on urban issues. It has been argued that the process of globalisation results in increased social polarisation and subsequently sharper spatial segregation. Indeed, many politicians express a fear of rising segregation, envisioning the emergence of 'ghettos' or as it is called in the Netherlands 'income neighbourhoods'. In order to prevent concentrations of poverty from forming, a new area-based policy was formulated which aimed to restructure the urban housing market at the neighbourhood level and mix low-quality with high-quality houses. Such a concern with social mix has become common in a number of developed countries. In this regard the analysis has a wide relevance. This paper explores these ideas both by discussing the theoretical framework underpinning the policy, and by examining empirical support for it. Since the policy of housing-quality mixing is still in the first phase of implementation, relevant longitudinal data is not yet available. As a consequence our evaluation addresses present poverty concentrations and housing stock (mix) characteristics in the city of Amsterdam. By comparing neighbourhoods that already have a 'mixed' housing stock to homogeneous neighbourhoods, it has been possible to see whether mixing really does correspond to significantly lower poverty rates. It turns out that the empirical facts are quite different from the expected results: mixing does not in fact reduce poverty. It is concluded that the policy lacks an empirical basis. Housing-mix policy requires substantial budgets, while the goal of reducing poverty cannot be reached. As an alternative, we suggest that poverty is a personal characteristic and that it is therefore preferable to approach poverty directly instead of hoping for the results of a dubious 'neighbourhood effect'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]