It is time for a New Amsterdam Alliance. The best ideas for the future of our city often do not lie on desks in the Stopera. But on the streets, in neighbourhood meetings, where entrepreneurs sit together and where our young people take the initiative.
Femke Halsema, State of the city speech May 2023
In 2025, Amsterdam will celebrate its 750ste birthday. A milestone to celebrate. To celebrate that Amsterdam is a vibrant, beautiful city, where people from all over the world, with diverse backgrounds and orientations, feel at home. A rich city financially, socially and culturally. Consequently, on international rankings of the most liveable cities, Amsterdam often scores very high. According to recent Arcadis research among 100 world cities, Amsterdam is even the most attractive large city in the world with the highest scores on liveability, transport and social cohesion. Only on affordability does the city score less.
These high scores mask the fact that there are parts of the city where things are much less well off. For instance, people in neighbourhoods like Nieuw-West and Southeast live on average six years shorter than other Amsterdammers and become chronically ill much sooner. Some neighbourhoods also score significantly worse than the rest of the city in terms of liveability, equity and crime.
Research shows that large groups of residents of these neighbourhoods do not feel heard and seen. The government offers various measures to support people in difficulty, but the system is complex and the measures are fragmented, making it difficult to find the right help. Moreover, (digital) skills, access to a computer and the internet are often necessary to obtain this support, while far from everyone has these.
The place where you are born and grow up in Amsterdam strongly determines your future. The great inequality between neighbourhoods in the opportunities young and old have to shape their lives threatens the liveability of the city. Without a structural and timely approach to tackling the problems in these neighbourhoods, ever larger groups are falling into subsistence insecurity, and street safety is deteriorating. This is unacceptable - not only for the liveability of the city, but also from a compassionate point of view. In a prosperous city like Amsterdam, it is irresponsible for children to grow up in such conditions.
