Dutch Cities

Graffiti in an Amsterdam Doorway (street artist C215, photo courtesy of Peter Bardell)

This ‘virtual’ issue of IJURR brings together thirteen articles on Dutch cities, published in print in the journal since 2001 or published online (in ‘EarlyView’) and awaiting publication in print. This set of articles explores some of the ways in which Dutch cities are distinctive, especially in terms of the design, struggles over, and effects of urban policy. The collection is intended to enable scholars who are not specialists on the Netherlands to use Dutch cases to contribute to theorizing the interconnections between state, public policy and public participation. Here, Dutch cities have a particularly strong tradition. As this introduction argues, the articles provide essential insights into the workings and shortcomings of Dutch (although primarily Amsterdam) urban policies, and clearly show how the instrumental rationality of such policies have come to prevail, while substantial rational discussions — or urban politics rather than urban policy — have become of relatively minor importance. This, in combination with a focus on urban policy rather than urbanism in current Dutch urban studies, leave some of the remarkable developments within the fully urbanized Dutch society — in particular the current growth in various forms of exclusionary practices, including those based on race and ethnicity — relatively open for an important new research agenda.

Talja Blokland,
IJURR Reviews Editor
June 2011

Introduction
Talja Blokland

Recreative City: Amsterdam, Vehicular Ideas, and the Adaptive Spaces of Creative Policy
Jamie Peck

Partnerships in Urban Restructuring: Building Long-term Relationships or a Pragmatic Managerial Tool? The Dutch Experience
Anita Kokx

Exclusionary Policies are Not Just about the ‘Neoliberal City’: A Critique of Theories of Urban Revanchism and the Case of Rotterdam
Gwen Van Eijk (2010)

Amsterdam in Crisis: How the (Local) State Buffers and Suffers
Sako Musterd and Ewald Engelen (2010)

Mega-projects in New York, London and Amsterdam
Susan S. Fainstein (2008)

Citizen Participation in a Mediated Age: Neighbourhood Governance in The Netherlands
Justus Uitermark and Jan Willem Duyvendak (2008)

Variations in Immigrant Incorporation in the Neighborhoods of Amsterdam
John Logan (2006)

Reinventing Multiculturalism: Urban citizenship and the Negotiation of Ethnic Diversity in Amsterdam
Justus Uitermark, Ugo Rossi and Henk van Houtum (2005)

Dutch Housing Allowances: Social Housing at Risk
Hugo Priemus (2004)

Is the Institutionalization of Urban Movements Inevitable? A Comparison of the Opportunities for Sustained Squatting in New York City and Amsterdam
Hans Pruijt (2003)