European Cities are changing. Newspapers write extensively about the creative class working on their laptops in hipster cafes and about middle-class families returning from the suburbs and exchanging their cars for cargo bikes to transport their children around the city. This reassessment of the city – as the playground of a new urban middle class – is clearly visible than in Amsterdam, which perhaps more than any other Dutch city resembles the success story envisioned by the Dutch government in their newest urban agenda Celebrate the City (2015). Gentrification, active citizenship and do-it-yourself urbanism are celebrated as core values of this new, postmodern city. But not everyone is celebrating and some people feel left behind.

Working-class neighbourhoods

This sentiment is felt particularly in the working-class districts of yesteryear such as Higher Blackley in Manchester, the 8th arrondissement in Lyon, and Marzahn-Hellersdorf in Berlin. These neighbourhoods are the domain of an urban working class who chose to remain in the city in the 1960s and 1970s – during the peak of suburbanisation. A well-known Dutch example is the neighbourhood of Betondorp (literally translated as Concrete Village, from now on the Village), which is known for its exceptional architecture – it was the first neighbourhood in the Netherlands where concrete was used to construct social housing – and for its famous former residents: football player Johan Cruijff and writer Gerard Reve. The neighbourhood was designed as a garden city following the principles laid out by the English urban planner Ebenezer Howard, who felt that workers in the city had a right to a green and village-like setting. It was built in the early 1920s by housing associations affiliated to different labour unions and to this day Betondorp is described by its residents as a working-class district with a strong sense of community. More than 90% of the housing stock consists of social housing, the average income of residents is relatively low, and a relatively high number of elderly live in the neighbourhood. Interviews with residents and with urban professionals (such as professionals working for the municipality, housing associations, welfare organisations and the police) provide a picture of a residential area composed of an ‘old guard of true Amsterdammers’.