Neighbourhood based policies in the Netherlands: Counteracting neighbourhood effects?

Abstract

Gideon Bolt and Ronald van Kempen explore neighbourhood level policy in The Netherlands showing how interest in neighbourhood based problems has changed over the past 40 years. In the 1970s and 1980s the focus was mainly on improving the physical quality of the neighbourhood by means of demolition of derelict housing. Social problems and problems associated with concentration and segregation were hardly mentioned. Urban renewal was based on the principle of 'building for the neighbourhood residents'. From the second half of the 1980s onwards, policymakers became more aware of the fact that physical renewal alone was insufficient to solve the social and economic problems in neighbourhoods and that it was equally important to address economic, social, cultural and environmental factors. Since 2001 the debate on the social mix changed in tone and the problems associated with spatial concentrations of minority ethnic groups were featured explicitly, for instance in the influential Memorandum of a commission that investigated the effectiveness of Dutch integration policy. However, despite successive policies aimed at the promotion of social mix, the authors demonstrate that the housing policies of successive governments have led to an increase in both income and ethnic segregation in Utrecht and the Hague. Policy investments in priority neighbourhoods have not been effective in counterbalancing these segregationist tendencies. In conclusion they highlight that there is a puzzling paradox in the Dutch debate on anti-segregation policy. On the one hand, there is a lot of discussion about measures that should reduce segregation (restructuring policy, Rotterdam law), although their effect is limited. On the other hand there is lack of attention for the segregationist effects of other policy measures (planning of new housing estates, Right to Buy, limiting the access of median incomes to social housing) that were not enforced with the aim to affect segregation.