Fighting a losing battle? Neighbourhood-based social mobility in times of retrenching social interventions

Social mobility is a key concept in neighbourhood-based policies in Europe and the US. The Dutch neighbourhood approach often implies physical restructuring combined with a range of economic and social mobility strategies such as counselling, citizenship courses, debt relief, work training / placement programs and language courses. However, the...

The integrated renewal of Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer high-rise

In recent years, there has been a growing interest all over the world in improving the large housing estates of the 1960s and 1970s. Highrise estates are associated with problematic living conditions, deprived areas, isolated locations, a poor population, a negative image, social isolation, pollution and crime. In short: they are not the most...

Key players in urban renewal in the Netherlands, Chapter 12

The social housing sector in the Netherlands is the largest in Europe. Social housing dominates in many urban neighbourhoods, and contemporary urban renewal in the Netherlands focuses on areas where housing associations own the majority of the stock. At the same time, urban renewal means more than just renewal of housing; rather, it is...

Energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies in urban renewal

Renewing stigmatised estates in the Netherlands: A framework for image renewal strategies

Like in so many other European countries, the large housing estates of the post-World War II generation in the Netherlands did not fulfil the great and often Utopian expectations. Nowadays they are confronted with the effects of a negative image, a stigma. Images differ according to the persons asked for an opinion. Internal images, elicited...