Speaking as a British person,
If the problem is our dickheads going over there and ruining the vibe by harassing the locals, sex workers, and pissing everywhere I have a solution:
Turn the whole area into an LGBT area with Gay Bars and Drag Queens and send over a few of our police to coordinate on patrols with the Dutch police.
I’m serious, on a night out on Canal Street in Manchester there is almost no dickheads because:
-
They stay away from Gay Bars because of their own insecure masculinity even though Gay Clubs have better music.
-
The Drag Queens, most of whom act as front of house, ticketing, and head floor management DO NOT suffer fools and anyone harassing or being a knob will be ejected them from the premises quickly.
-
The GM police love working with the Drag Queens who stand outside the clubs trying to convince punters to go inside because they’re an active part of keeping the whole area safe by pointing out antisocial behaviour. Also when they don’t have a dickhead to deal with, they’re having a good chat.
Edit:
Also a belated apology on behalf of my fellow idiot countrymen. Also I’m of the opinion both sex work and recreational marijuana should be legalised and regualted in the UK. Hopefully that would also help with stemming the flow of idiot tourists abroad.
I appreciate your willingness to self-reflect, but the problem isn’t just tourists.
It’s a very valuable location and the capitalists want to turn it into expensive condos.
Yeah I tend to think this is the real reason. De Wallen is prime real eststate and Helsema seems bent on turning Amsterdam into a shiny sparkling playground for rich fuckheads.
Have they considered that if they take away the red light district the rich fuckheads might not want to visit as much?
The rich fuck heads will pay enormous sums for the real estate once it is sterilized.
As I said, it’s a prime location. Comparable to Manhattan in NYC.
It’s not about visitors. It’s about the real estate in that area. Is very historic and very central but because the area is so party oriented it can’t be properly monetized by these bland, rich parasites.
They wanna push out the riff raff and make it all clean an inoffensive for property investors.
It’s past serving it’s purpose. It drew lots of people and filled government and real estate coffers when the city was down, but now it’s a net drag because the people dropping €6M on an apartment don’t want the common riff raff (anyone able to spend less than €800/night on a hotel room) from disturbing their peace and smelling like skunk all the time.
(Okay, there are technically only a couple places in the city on the market for €6M, but with prices quickly approaching €10000/m2 all but the rich and snobby are getting shoved out)
-
More than 20,000 people have signed a petition against the transfer of the booths, calling instead for better crowd control in the area and greater police surveillance, especially at night.
Yes, but isn’t it much easier to take the problem and just move it somewhere else?
I know a few people who live in Amsterdam and they all said basically the same thing: as it currently is, most locals don’t really go there because it’s miserable due to all the poorly behaved tourists. I’m sure that there are plenty of locals that may disagree, but it seems to be mostly an area for tourists.
Like any situation there are going to be winners and losers, but I feel that this is most likely a fairly large net positive for most residents.
As others have pointed out, it’s also a way to replace the soul of the city with something more economically interesting: clean apartments.
Amsterdam has a problem with gentrification on one side and “cheap” tourism on the other. This move seems to want to solve the later by amplifying the former…
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sex workers in Amsterdam have protested against the planned transfer of their famed red light district to an out-of-town “erotic centre”, in what is seen as part of a battle for the city’s soul.
Dozens of people, many wearing masks to shield their identity, marched through the streets towards City Hall, one carrying a banner saying: “If sex workers are not to blame then why are we being punished?”
The mayor, Femke Halsema, wants to uproot the red light district and move it out of town to a purpose-built erotic centre, aiming to rid Amsterdam of its image as a “sin city” while reducing the number of tourists and rates of petty crime in the area.
She has found herself up against local residents who do not want the new centre on their doorstep, as well as sex workers who feel they are being made scapegoats for the criminals and crowds surrounding their neon-lit booths.
Halsema has long opposed the centuries-old red light district, known as De Wallen, where sex workers stand in windows waiting for customers.
It has also launched a “stay away” campaign to discourage stag nights and boozy tourists, which caused a stir in Britain after the council said it would start by targeting British men aged 18 to 35.
The original article contains 491 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The proposal makes a lot of sense but I can also understand why people feel it’s a shame to say goodbye to such an iconic district. Ultimately NIMBYs will always win. In this case I’m not convinced it’s a bad thing.
