Afterword: exiting Amsterdam's red light district

O f all the great European city centres, Amsterdam’s surely attracts more than its fair share of academic scrutiny. Written of variously as a model of urban conservation, the focus of a sprawling polycentric region and an exemplar of cosmopolitan city living, Amsterdam’s city centre appears to offer rich pickings for the urban scholar seeking to make connections between the legacy of metropolitan pasts and the challenges of post-metropolitan futures (Soja, 2000; Terhorst et al., 2003; Uitermark et al., 2005). Yet even though Amsterdam’s city centre can be thought of as merely one node among many in a sprawling, polycentric urban region with multiple centres, it is clear that urbanists are drawn back time and again to it, with Soja (2000, pp. 121–124) describing it as a ‘clearly readable’, ‘assuredly centred’, public forum where there is a ‘daily festival of spontaneous political and cultural ideas played out’. Whilst many would dispute Soja’s conclusion that Amsterdam’s city centre has strongly resisted neoliberal and neoconservative transformation (see especially Nijman, 1999), it is fairly easy to understand why he would reach such a conclusion: Amsterdam’s city centre is, compared with many ‘dead’ US downtowns, richly textured, historicized and, ultimately, enchanting. From the historical oasis of the Begijnhof quadrant, the tastefully converted warehouses around Singel, the street markets of Jordaan through to the bustling shopping streets around the Spui, Amsterdam appears the ideal city for perambulation, and the perfect setting for modern-day flaneurialism. Put simply, Amsterdam city centre seduces the urban geographer, its labyrinthine canal network seemingly guiding the walker around an environment that, despite its theme park qualities, displays a reassuring veneer of authenticity and historicity. However, it is not merely the patina of time that leads Amsterdam city centre to be celebrated as an ‘authentic’ urban space: rather, it is its seeming ability to bring together, and celebrate, difference (see Lofland, 2000; Uitermark et al., 2005). The old and new, the sacred and profane, noise and stillness—all can be experienced, often within the space of a few metres. It is this play of contrasts, and the challenge of making sense of this dialectical urbanism, that draws the urbanist time and again back to Amsterdam. And, inevitably, the one district that seems to provide the richest pickings for the urban geographer keen to consider the possibilities of urban life today is the Wallen—not the city’s only red light district, as the contributions to this special feature note, but the district that seems to highlight both the city’s innate capacity to enliven and enrich our lives, as well as its tendency to flatten and dehumanize even the most personal aspects of our lived existence. As a space where everything—and everyone—appears for sale, the Wallen intensifies desire at the same time that it forbids it from running rampant through the city. The Wallen is a space apart, an adult playground, a monument to polymorphous perversity, a containment zone, a human zoo. And, significantly, it persists at the heart of the city centre.