Belonging in the Kinkerbuurt A qualitative study on feeling at home and place making in a gentrifying neighbourhood

© Carly Wollaert, 2017

Nathalie Sijbrands 10553789 Master Sociology, Track: Urban Sociology 08-07-2019 Word count: 18889 Supervisor: mw. dr. L.J. (Linda) van de Kamp Second reader: mw. dr. O.A. (Adeola) Enigbokan University of Amsterdam Master Thesis Urban Sociology Table of Contents BELONGING IN THE CHANGING KINKERBUURT ...... 3 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 6 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...... 9

2.1 GENTRIFICATION ...... 9 State-led gentrification and social mixing in Amsterdam ...... 10 Role of consumption in gentrification ...... 12 Authenticity and branding ...... 13 2.2 BELONGING: FEELING AT HOME AND DOING PLACE ...... 15 Definitions of belonging ...... 16 2.3 COMMUNITY AND PLACE AS URBAN PRACTICES ...... 19 Community ...... 19 Place making ...... 21 3 METHODOLOGY ...... 23

3.1 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ...... 23 3.2 RESEARCH POPULATION ...... 23 The final sample ...... 25 3.3 RESEARCH METHODS ...... 28 Exploration ...... 28 Interviews ...... 28 Observations ...... 29 3.4 DATA ANALYSIS ...... 30 3.5 REFLECTION ON OWN ROLE WITHIN RESEARCH ...... 30 3.6 LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY ...... 32 4 FEELING AT HOME IN THE CHANGING KINKERBUURT ...... 33

4.1 CHANGES IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD ...... 33 4.2 THE KINKERBUURT AS A HOME ...... 34 4.3 DIMENSIONS OF HOME ...... 37 Long-time residents and feelings at home ...... 37 Short-time residents and feeling at home ...... 39 Safety ...... 41 4.4 DIVERSITY AND SOCIAL MIXING ...... 42 5 COMMUNITY AND PLACES AS URBAN PRACTICES ...... 45

5.1 COMMUNITIES ...... 45 5.2 PLACE MAKING ...... 46 Kinkerstraat and Ten Kate market ...... 46 Community centre: De Klinker & De Havelaar ...... 48 Cafes and bars ...... 49 6 CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION ...... 53 Future research and policy ...... 53 Conclusion ...... 54 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 56 8 APPENDIX: LIST OF INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 61

2 Belonging in the changing Kinkerbuurt

This qualitative case study on the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt in Amsterdam West explores how residents of the neighbourhood experience belonging in various ways. Studies on belonging in changing neighbourhoods show that even though there is not so much physical displacement of people due to gentrification in the Netherlands, long-time residents can still feel cultural displacement, which can reduce their feelings of belonging. Belonging is for this case divided into two subcategories. Firstly, the passive feelings of home, for which ‘home as a haven’, ‘home as a heaven’ and safety are found to be important elements. Secondly, the more active practices of community and place that shape people’s views of (spaces in) the neighbourhood. In-depth interviews, short conversations and observations give insight into feelings of belonging of residents of the Kinkerbuurt and have found that even though the neighbourhood is changing, interviewees do still feel very much at home. The Kinkerbuurt offers a huge variety of places that people feel at home at and it seems like the street scene and it stores, cafes and restaurants are still mixed enough for everyone to feel like they still belong there. The question for future research is if this will stay this way.

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Photo 1: Kinkerstraat in the 1900’s. © SERC.

Photo 2: Kinkerstraat in 1932. © SERC.

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Photo 3: De Clercqstraat in 2019. © N.Sijbrands

Photo 4: Kinkerstraat in 2019. © N.Sijbrands

5 1 Introduction

The Kinkerbuurt used to be a quiet working-class neighbourhood with tall trees and people playing music on the streets. Today, the neighbourhood is characterized by busy traffic in the main streets and houses a diversity of people, shops and restaurants. The Kinkerstraat, one of the main streets of the area, is an eclectic mix of telephone stores, hipster clothing stores, Turkish bakeries, expensive coffee bars and a branch of the Dutch retail chain HEMA. The traffic can be chaotic and busy and there are bikes everywhere on the sidewalk. Turn right or left anywhere on the Kinkerstraat and you find small streets behind all this hustle and bustle: almost like an oasis of peace where many people from all sorts of classes, ages and ethnicities live together in a small space. Generally speaking, houses in this area are small and rents have skyrocketed over the past years, especially in the private sector (Pinkster, 2014; Savini, et.al. 2016). What used to be a shop for cheese and milk became a Moroccan delicacy store and has now turned into a hip coffee bar selling matcha lattes with soy milk for four euros, as one of the long-time residents described it (Jan, 01-05-2019; see further below). The city of Amsterdam has been dealing with increasing gentrification over the years (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015). Gentrification is the economic and cultural appreciation of city areas that were formerly disinvested and devalued by the affluent middle class (Lees, 2008). For this reason, increasing numbers of young urban professionals and students with a higher socio-economic status have come to live in the neighbourhood over the past decade, changing the imagery of the neighbourhood (Butler, 2007; Zukin, 2009). Gentrifying processes go hand in hand with processes of reinvestment of capital, changes in landscapes and displacement of people. Very striking about the Kinkerbuurt is that the average duration of residence of its inhabitants is now about four years, which makes it one of the neighbourhoods with the shortest duration of stay, compared to an average of 8,7 years in the whole city of Amsterdam (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2019). Gentrification nowadays is as well-documented as it is debated. A key concern in these debates is the literal displacement of long-time residents from the old working-class by middle- and upper-class residents. Since the Kinkerbuurt is changing so much in terms of residents and consumption spaces, it is an interesting setting to study the impact of gentrification. Little research has been done on the Kinkerbuurt, even though it can function as an example of a neighbourhood that is gentrifying quickly, making it an academically relevant topic at this stage. The Kinkerbuurt is at a turning point of gentrification, according to urban geographer Cody Hochstenbach, and residents start to revolt (Van Bergeijk, 2017).

6 The Kinkerbuurt provides an example of how gentrification works out in different ways. Not only the changing scenery is interesting, but the ‘new’ people in the neighbourhood have a huge impact on the look and feel of the neighbourhood as well, changing its whole imagery. This change in imagery is at least partly caused by the advent of new residents with a higher socio-economic status (Butler, 2007; Zukin, 2009).

This study has been conducted to gain a better understanding of how the residents of the Kinkerbuurt experience their own neighbourhood, and to show how long-time residents experience the transformation of the area. Neighbourhood belonging can go beyond the social meaning of place and is often related to environmental attributes as well (Pinkster, 2016). The same place can evoke varied forms of feelings of belonging to different people. When the physical environment succeeds to make different groups of people feel at home, the physical environment does not have to be changed (Van der Graaf & Duyvendak, 2009). However, in this case the physical environment is changing quite a bit which makes the case of the Kinkerbuurt an interesting one. This research focusses on residents’ feelings of belonging in the Kinkerbuurt. Such a rapidly transforming neighbourhood raises questions about how different people relate to places (Devine-Wright, 2009) and who then belongs in the neighbourhood, who might have never felt to belong there, and who might not belong there anymore at this stage (Duyvendak, 2011). Increasing mobility and migration within and to the city also sparks questions about the identity of place (Massey, 1995). The societal relevance of this study is also higher than ever. The Kinkerbuurt is under a lot of pressure due to high numbers of tourists visiting the neighbourhood, causing a decrease in social cohesion, rising property prices and growing inequality according to local political parties1, causing a prohibition of Airbnb’s in the near future. These concerns about rising property prices and further segregation are shared by residents of the neighbourhood. Social rental houses are being sold to housing associations to sell in the private sector and people have started protest actions against this, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to find an affordable house in the neighbourhood; accessible housing on the ground floor for the elderly has become especially hard to find.2 Besides working on this research about the neighbourhood, I am a resident of the Kinkerbuurt and as I see all these changes happening right in front of me, I find it’s important to me to contribute to the discussion as an insider with a sociological perspective.

1 https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/airbnb-verbod-voor-wallen-kinkerbuurt-en-haarlemmerbuurt~b16cdd11/.

2 https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/188871/loes-81-voert-actie-tegen-verkoop-sociale-huurwoningen.

7 This study will address the issues mentioned above – gentrification, segregation and possible displacement – by examining people’s experiences of belonging in the changing Kinkerbuurt and answering the following research question: “How do residents in the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt experience belonging in various ways?”. In this study belonging will be approached from different angles. For this reason, the research question is divided into two sub-questions. Firstly, “What elements of ‘feeling at home’ play a role in residents’ feelings of belonging in the Kinkerbuurt?” and secondly, “How do the urban practices of ‘community’ and ‘place’ interact with feelings of belonging as experienced by residents of the Kinkerbuurt?”.

To find an answer to these questions, observations were done in the streets of the Kinkerbuurt and interviews were held with residents of the neighbourhood. This fieldwork is accompanied by literature on gentrification, belonging, feeling at home, community as a practice and place making, which will all be discussed in the following chapter two. Following this, I will discuss the methodology employed in chapter three, including a discussion of the research population, research methods, data analysis, a reflection on my own role in the research and the limitations of the study. Subsequently, the results will be divided in two parts: one focussing on the more passive feelings of belonging (chapter five), and one being concerned with more active ways of belonging, namely community and places as urban practices (chapter six). I will end with a conclusion and discussion.

8 2 Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework of this study is divided into two parts. The first part primarily serves as a background to the transforming neighbourhood. This part explains what gentrification is, mostly focusing on state-led gentrification in the Netherlands. Important for this study is the role that consumption plays in gentrification, as a lot of new consumption places have come into existence in the Kinkerbuurt and this affects both the look and feel of the neighbourhood and the people that live in it.

Photo 5: “Building on satisfaction” – De Hallen. © N.Sijbrands.

2.1 Gentrification The word gentrification was coined by Ruth Glass in 1964, when she described an ‘influx of gentry’ who were buying and renovating old mews and cottages in London inner-city neighbourhoods. The word itself is derived from ‘gentry’, which describes people more affluent and educated than their neighbours from the working-class. Glass believed that once the process of gentrification has started, it goes on rapidly, displacing all or most of the original working-class inhabitants of the district or neighbourhood (Shaw, 2008). Nowadays, the concept of gentrification is seen as something much more comprehensive, described by Shaw (2008, p.1698) as “a generalized middle-class restructuring of place, encompassing the entire transformation from low‐status neighbourhoods to upper‐ middle‐class playgrounds”. Gentrification now also extends beyond just the housing and has its impact on workplaces, shops, bars and all sorts of retail and commercial precincts. Gentrification is not only visible in big cities, but can also occur in rural townships and small villages.

9 State-led gentrification and social mixing in Amsterdam The Netherlands has traditionally discouraged income segregation by having a mixed housing supply with a big share of social rental-housing. Strong tenant rights are embedded in law and strictly enforced. The bulk of municipal land in Amsterdam is owned outright by the city and leased to users (Savini, Boterman, Van Gent & Majoor, 2016). This means there is not that much direct physical repression of people in The Netherlands and Amsterdam (Van Gent, 2013; Vermeij & Kullberg, 2015). Even though Amsterdam’s housing market has increasingly been liberalized, the city’s housing policy is still very strict on having mixed housing in the various neighbourhoods. This means there is a share of housing that is rental, a share that is for sale and a share of about forty percent of housing that is social-rental (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015). In practice this means that in many neighbourhoods in Amsterdam, ‘gentrifiers’ and ‘non-gentrifiers’ live right next to each other. The stable social democracy in the Netherlands has led to levels of segregation that are very low compared to other European cities. Despite trends leading in the opposite direction, the level of social dislocation of people in Amsterdam remains low (Savini, et. al., 2016). Amsterdam represents an example of a city where gentrification proceeds by stealth, rather than by force. The official policy goal in Amsterdam is to create ‘social mix’, and definitely not to capitalize on the full market value of a particular area (Sakizlioglu & Uitermark, 2014). Amsterdam’s population has been predominantly native Dutch until increasing numbers of people from all over the world moved there, which resulted in the fact that since 2011 more than half of the city’s population is of non-Dutch descent, making Amsterdam a minority-majority city (Savini, et. al., 2016). With such a diversity of inhabitants the city of Amsterdam tries to stimulate social mix because policy-makers mistakenly assume that mixed neighbourhoods lead to social interaction between different groups of people (Uitermark, 2003). The Netherlands and Amsterdam experience a strong economic growth that is combined with a compact city approach, but since the global financial crisis, several other European cities are looking at their urban policies in new ways. More experimental neoliberalist methods are being used to boost the real estate market. Amsterdam has also become a battleground where the old policies no longer manage to reach their original objectives. Even though the bulk of all land in Amsterdam is still owned by the municipality, the economic crisis puts pressure on Amsterdam’s system of direct control of its land (Savini, et. al., 2016).

10 Especially since the 1990s, new housing projects, for example IJburg (Lupi, 2008), built on artificial islands, have made it possible for the city’s population to grow by about one hundred thousand individuals over the past decade (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015). More money became available for both the housing market (Van der Veen & Schuiling, 2005) as for home buyers from younger and higher educated households, who also became more attracted to the city or decided to stay, even after having children. Part of this is due to the expanding service economy (Zukin, 1987). A switch from manufacturing industry to more service-based industries took place, which coincided with an increase in white-collar workers that are generally more attracted to urban environments (Hamnett, 2003). The number of middle-class residents in cities is rising which resulted in rising housing prices (Pinkster, 2014). Current real estate prices are amongst the highest in the country. Consequently, inhabitants of inner-city neighbourhoods are worried that the area will become too expensive for locals, who are increasingly priced out by foreign investors, especially since vacation rental website Airbnb got so popular (Pinkster & Boterman, 2017). Gentrification in Amsterdam started in the inner-city neighbourhood the Jordaan in the 1980s, but it now affects most neighbourhoods within the A10 highway (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015; Savini, et.al. 2016), including the Kinkerbuurt. For example, Pinkster (2014) describes the Concrete Village in Amsterdam East that is home to a growing number of ‘new’ ‘other’ tenants and experiences an influx of more affluent residents in former social housing. Consequently, long-time residents experience neighbourhood decline and loss of neighbourhood belonging. According to residents, the Kinkerbuurt has changed quite a bit over the years, and you can see changes of scenery on old images of the neighbourhood at the Amsterdam city archive.3 The changing of places can have an impact on resident’s everyday lives. As social geographer Massey (1995, p. 186) says, the identity of a place is very intimately connected with the histories which are told about them and how they are told, and which history becomes the dominant neighbourhood history in the end. In my research, I collected histories of inhabitants of the Kinkerbuurt in Amsterdam. These histories include the stories of residents who have lived in the same place for 89 years, as well as histories of people who have spent most of their lives outside the neighbourhood or even outside Amsterdam. As new restaurants, bars and cultural centres come into existence,

3 https://beeldbank.amsterdam.nl/

11 they could also have a likewise impact on this neighbourhood history, because places that were part of someone’s history could disappear.

Role of consumption in gentrification

Gentrified neighbourhoods generally attract a high number of young urban professionals from the new middle-class (Lees, 2008). Hardly any residents are physically displaced because of the policy on social mix in neighbourhoods, yet long-time residents can experience cultural displacement (Rettberg & Willems, 2019), loss of emotional meaning, and feelings of estrangement in their neighbourhood (Pinkster & Boterman, 2017). This is especially likely to happen when older residents are used to a more community-based lifestyle. Some restaurants and bars try to offer a “safe and comfortable place to ‘perform’ difference from mainstream norms” to urban consumers (Zukin, 2008, p. 724), but what is safe and comfortable for one person can feel unsafe or uncomfortable for someone else. The arrival of more students and young urban professionals has led to an intensification of processes of commercial and residential gentrification that are usually encouraged by the municipalities of Dutch cities. Even though Amsterdam still knows many ‘mixed neighbourhoods’, this can lead to experiences of repression for people who have been long-time residents of those areas, even though they are not actually repressed by force. When middle- and upper-class residents come to a part of a city, this usually brings a change of image for the neighbourhood (Zukin, 2009) because the new middle-class residents introduce new lifestyles and promote their ways of living (Rath & Ardekani, 2018). Lifestyle and taste can be of importance for residents of the neighbourhood and their experience of the neighbourhood and whether they feel at home there. Most urban consumption is still very much focused on the fulfilling of everyday needs and the new urban consumption spaces relate more and more to new forms of leisure and culture, but also to new patterns of travel that have to be fulfilled (Zukin, 1998). These new forms of leisure, travel and culture are part of a new urban lifestyle. In Amsterdam, these changes usually include hip coffee bars and yoga schools (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015). Everywhere in the city, this new middle class presents their new lifestyles and encourages their ways of living (Rath & Ardekani, 2018). According to Simmel, the metropolis puts an emphasis “on striving for the most individual forms of personal existence” (Simmel, 2011, p. 337). In other words, urbanism promotes individuality and therefore processes of individualization (Karp, Stone, Yoels & Dempsey, 2015). These hip, new, specialized coffee

12 bars that come into existence because of their popularity with the new middle class, are an example of how people’s individualized lifestyles are supported in the gentrified city. What these bars do, is offer a place for young urban professionals to work when they do not want to work from home or at the office.4 As a creative city, Amsterdam attracts many professionals who further promote these new urban facilities because of the high demand of them (Rath & Ardekani, 2018).

Authenticity and branding

New spaces fabricate an aura of authenticity that is based on the history of the neighbourhood (Zukin, 2008). But what happens if these actual ‘authentic places’, that have been in the neighbourhood for so many years, start to disappear? The disappearance and transformation of authentic places is something that is happening right now in the Kinkerbuurt, especially on the De Clercqstraat, Kinkerstraat and Bilderdijkstraat. Berry Shop, a suit store that had been located in the Kinkerstraat for years, makes place for Mr. Joy Vape Shop5. De Hallen is an example of a place that was not too long ago transformed from a tram depot to a place for recreation and consumption. The place still looks like a tram depot from the outside and even inside (see photo 6 and 7 below) in an effort to keep its looks authentic, but its function has changed a lot.

4 Said during interviews by interviewees. See chapter 4.1, 4.3 and 5.3. 5 Berry Shop disappearing as a consequence of gentrification, as said in Het Parool, a local newspaper https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/bewoners-in-geweer-tegen-verhipping-kinkerbuurt~b7855ea5/.

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Photo 6 & 7: De Hallen. © N.Sijbrands.

A particular form of gentrifying a neighbourhood is the construction of new housing, as happened as well in the Kinkerbuurt. For example, new houses on the Bilderdijkkade6 or apartments right next to De Hallen. Ouwehand & Bosch (2016) recognise urban renewal areas that make use of ‘branding’. This often includes ‘lifestyle profiling’, which is very recognisable in the branding of the new houses in the Kinkerbuurt as well. The branding here is very much focussed on De Hallen as a cultural, hip centre, framing it as the perfect place to live in Amsterdam. As you can see in the picture below (photo 8) the houses have a look that is modern but also similarly shaped like old canal houses for authenticity. Ouwehand & Bosch (2016) have examined how this type of branding helps buyers develop a sense of home in their new houses, as well as in the whole neighbourhood. They found that planning decisions for these projects are usually focussed on enhancing (future) residents’ sense of home, while these people are often limited in their capacity to actually feel at home in the rest of the neighbourhood. According to the study by Ouwehand & Bosch (2016), they limit themselves to getting to know only their very close environment which leads to little social identification with the rest of their environment and also a lack of familiarity

6 https://www.vinkbouw.nl/projecten/wonen/de-hallen.

14 with the neighbourhood and heaven feelings that will both be discussed in the next chapter. Altogether, this leads to limited feelings of feeling at home in the neighbourhood.

Photo 8: New houses at the Bilderdijkkade. © N.Sijbrands.

2.2 Belonging: feeling at home and doing place

According to Giddens (quoted in Clapham, 2005, p. 137) globalization, associated with the rise in information technology, leads to a “sense of rootlessness and meaninglessness”. Giddens argues that the pace of change in people’s lives has quickened and that this goes hand in hand with increasing feelings of alienation and a lack of control over all the different forces that have an impact on their lives. Along with this all, there is a trend towards increasing individualism and a decline in the traditional institutions that always used to frame people’s life experiences (Clapham, 2006). All of this leads to people lacking a sense of belonging and purpose in their lives. Feeling at home in the neighbourhood has become increasingly important as the process of globalisation - process of worldwide integration where places from all over the world are more in touch with each other than ever – goes hand in hand with the process of localisation. There is an increase in mobility and places are potentially starting to be more alike, which also makes it more important to distinguish yourself from others. For this reason it has become

15 increasingly important to feel at home in the neighbourhood (Van der Graaf & Duyvendak, 2009). Nowadays, people in cities are on a hunt for a sense of identity and belonging in the private sphere of the home and direct neighbourhood. This also means people increasingly develop attachments to particular places (Clapham, 2005). This is why the neighbourhood is such an important object of study right now. However, the situation is not just negative. A sense of home is a deep emotion that is difficult to describe and is shared by many. Research has found that we only feel at home with certain people and under certain circumstances (Duyvendak, Wekker, Mamadouh & Van Wageningen, 2016). We are able to feel at ease with quite a lot of people and in many situations, but these will not always feel like home. Our sense of home, trust and security can be spoiled when ‘certain people in certain places’ are present, and precisely these encounters with these people are the ones that can undermine feelings of belonging. For this reason, it is proposed that a good sense of home requires lighter relationships than policymakers would like to cultivate. In gentrifying and rapidly changing neighbourhoods, both newcomers and residents who have lived there for years can feel ‘out of place’ in the area. In changing neighbourhoods, new immigrants often become homesick for their places of origin, while native residents become nostalgic for the good old days (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 25). These are things that could also be happening in the Kinkerbuurt. All of the changes in the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt might have an impact on people’s feelings of belonging.

Definitions of belonging

Belonging is a sociological and geographical concept that has been used with numerous different meanings. It is often used as a synonym for place attachment, sense of place, identity, social cohesion, and citizenship (Hoekstra & Pinkster, 2017), and even though these words are linked to belonging, they are probably more a couple of elements of belonging instead of a pure definition of what it is to belong. The definition that Hoekstra and Pinkster (2017, p.224) use for belonging is “the affective relationship between individuals and their environment”. In this definition, belonging depends on an individuals’ social location in terms of their own social identity and categorization by others, but also as their attachments to different places. According to Duyvendak (2011) belonging relates to people’s feelings of home in specific places and around specific people, as well as people’s identification with places (Devine-Wright, 2009; Devine-Wright & Manzo, 2013), which is very similar to Hoekstra and

16 Pinkster’s (2017) definition. Other researchers use different focusses when they speak about belonging. Davis, Ghorashi and Smets (2018) say that feelings of belonging start to exist when there is a sense of inclusion or exclusion. Belonging is a relational phenomenon: “it becomes activated when people experience inclusion or exclusion in their interactions with others” (Davis, et. al., 2018, p. 292). Another definition sees belonging as the sense of identification with particular places in a neighbourhood, occuring through particular symbolic and physical attributes (Devine- Wright, 2009; Benson & Jackson, 2013). A specific sense of belonging used in research is ‘elective belonging’ that involves choosing a place to live based on the people that live there (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 11). In this type of belonging, people decide to move to a certain area or neighbourhood and claim moral ownership over the place that they live in, because they feel they can claim belonging as a result of having chosen to move to that specific area, that is in a functional or symbolic way important to them. This theory also shows people’s preference of living amongst people that are similar to them, people from their ‘own kind’. As a result, local friends become a ratification of people’s places of residence. This sense of belonging is slightly different from the focus Blokland and Nast (2014) place when talking about belonging. They emphasize the importance of public familiarity when they speak about belonging. Public familiarity is all about recognizing and being recognized in local places and will be discussed in the next chapter. As you can see in the section above, belonging is an overarching term that includes various elements and different senses of belonging. Even though there are so many different definitions of belonging, in this study the choice was made to focus on people’s experiences of belonging in their neighbourhood by looking at feeling at home and the practices of community and place. Belonging is all about social relations and physical relations to place. Although there are many more different definitions of belonging, in this study the concept will be broadly divided into four different aspects that will be discussed in the next part of this chapter: home as a haven or a heaven; public familiarity and amicability; community as an urban practice; and the physical attributes of belonging that can be described as place making. The choice for these four categories was made because they support what respondents of this study said during the interviews I conducted. Therefore these categories provide the most complete picture of belonging in this particular case. All of these categories play a role in this research and are in some ways interlinked. Feelings for a place can change but they always

17 refer to a place that is less variable. The neighbourhood serves as the defining environment to which people relate in particular ways in this study.

Home as a haven or a heaven, public familiarity and amicability Duyvendak, in his book on home, belonging and nostalgia (2011, p. 38), elaborates on the sense of home that people feel and distinguishes between home as a haven and home as a heaven. Home as a haven is more concerned with physical and material security and with feeling mentally safe in a place. A place feels more mentally safe when it is predictable. Home as a haven is a place for “retreat, relaxation, intimacy and domesticity” (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 38-39), a safe haven. This idea is often more linked to the micro level of the house in the material sense, but these feelings can be felt in other places and situations as well. On the other hand, home as a heaven is connected with people’s public identity. Home as a heaven can be a particular place, for example a neighbourhood. A heaven is a public place where “one can collectively be, express and realize oneself” (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 38). It is a place where someone feels publicly free and independent. Home in this sense embodies a shared history with people, a place with people you know, your ‘own people’ and your own activities. A heaven is a place where individuals can be, develop and express themselves collectively (p. 39), where residents can connect with each other, often through the creation of communities, which will be discussed more thoroughly in the upcoming part of literature on feeling at home. Another important aspect of home according to Duyvendak (2011) is ‘familiarity’. Familiarity is concerned with knowing a place. This idea assumes that people who have lived in a place for a longer period of time will probably feel more at home. This is linked to the concept of public familiarity (Blokland & Nast, 2014) that characterizes a social aspect of the city in which fluid encounters and durable engagements occur. Residents of a neighbourhood are able to recognize each other and even expect to see certain people in certain places, which increases people’s feelings of belonging (Blokland, 2017, p. 126). Duyvendak et. al (2016) want to go towards a lighter form of a sense of home and stress the importance of amicability. To obtain that amicability public familiarity is a necessity, but the way in which Blokland and Nast (2014) define it is incomplete. Familiarity presumably also signifies amicability, which denotes friendly interactions. Amicability is more about activity than identity. In heterogeneous neighbourhoods like the Kinkerbuurt, people often do not have much in common in terms of ethnic, religious and cultural identity, but they

18 can still have common activities (Duyvendak et. al., 2016, p. 27). This then forms a foundation for amicability that allows people to feel at home, while also giving others the space to make sure they feel at home as well. When treated amicably by the people you are in contact with, they give you space but also the recognition that you belong at that place. These friendly relationships need time to develop (Duyvendak et. al., 2016). Familiarity and amicability interlink with home as a heaven as well as with home as a haven. Since amicability increases the feelings of safety as it increases the predictability of situations (Blokland, 2017), it can be linked with home as a haven which is concerned with the safe environment of a home. The link with home as a heaven is even more clear, as amicability embodies a shared history with people, in which people make the place. More on this will be discussed in chapter ‘4.3 Dimensions of home’ in the findings. What is mentioned above can help by answering the first subquestion of this study: “What elements of ‘feeling at home’ play a role in residents’ feelings of belonging in the Kinkerbuurt?” One aim of this research is to find out whether or not the Kinkerbuurt is a heaven and a haven to its residents, and what factors this depends on, to see if heaven and haven are applicable to the feelings of home that residents of the neighbourhood can experience or not.

2.3 Community and place as urban practices

Community

Discussing where someone feels they belong is one thing, but experiencing belonging through practice is something quite different. More and more people do not live where they were born, and the meaning of place for people’s sense of belonging has changed in these times of increasing mobility. The concept of ‘community’ is also changing, and is becoming increasingly diverse, dynamic and contested (Blokland, 2017). However, the need for community had definitely not disappeared. Community is still a widely used term in both (urban) research and everyday life. The word community is used to refer to “an entity that is cohesive, hangs or sticks together, and has clear boundaries” (Blokland, 2017, p. 6). In neighbourhood policy, community has become the equivalent of social cohesiveness, that should provide social capital to make problems go away. In research on cities, it has become clear that not every neighbourhood needs to be village-like (although

19 they can be), but that for a neighbourhood to remain livable, there has to be some sort of public life of social capital (Lofland, 1989; Blokland, 2017). Rapid social changes have created a need to rethink the concept of community. Blokland (2017) proposes to look at community through a lens of various different forms of social relations, instead of assuming that certain types of relations, like neighbours or friends, form the backbone of a community. In neighbourhood ‘communities’, it is possible that not all inhabitants are part of this community. However, this is not necessarily a problem. Communities do not always have to be limited to a residential neighbourhood, but the notion of community does have an important urban dimension. In cities, people are nowadays physically closer to each other and more often confronted with other people’s presence than ever before, which also means it has become increasingly difficult to escape others. We are connected with many different people in a context that engages a larger number of people that we do not know, than people we do know (Blokland, 2017, p. 42). In our daily lives we encounter many people, many of them only once. What happens in neighbourhoods is that we regularly encounter others in the same situations and at the same places, often without establishing any personal contact with these people (Blokland, 2017, p. 89). We interact with people all the time: when we cross the street, when we pay at the cash register at our local supermarket, when we step aside to let someone pass, we always take notice of others, even if it is only in such brief encounters. These interactions can be sources for community, by transaction and interdependency (Blokland, 2017, p. 86). In her book, Blokland (2017) creates an ideal-typical relational setting of belonging: somewhere between “strong intimacy of bonds on the one hand, and the strong anonymity of mere interdependencies on the other, lies the relational setting of having some more information” (p. 94) that allows us to experience an urban space as somewhere that we can belong, or something that functions as a comfort zone. In between this realm of strong intimacy and strong anonymity, a new type of ‘other’ is created. Milgram (1977) calls this type of other the ‘familiar stranger’, someone who you do not know personally, but you do recognize because of a shared daily path or ambulation. These familiar strangers can be the people you encounter at the supermarket or in the local pub, or anyone else you see on a weekly or maybe even daily basis. Another factor that is important for the social life in cities, is predictability. We expect behaviour to be ‘normal’ and have a need for normalcy that originates in a desire to experience daily continuity to enable us to make sense of everyday situations. Our experience of normalcy depends on two things – the first being, how often we experience particular

20 performances of people and how frequent they are, the second being, whether we consider these performances norm conforming or not. Normalcy relates to the degree of trust we put in social situations. ‘Trust’ here implies how familiar a social setting is. This trust provides feelings of home or belonging through a sense of security and predictability (Blokland, 2017, p. 104). These feelings of trust, especially of trusting other people, are strongest in people who shop locally or visit local pubs, and the more trust people experience, the safer they feel (p. 124). Blokland states that feeling safe is not the same as feeling at home, but that if ‘being comfortable’ equals ‘belonging’, then it can be said that these terms are connected. This trust in the social environment and in other people is also linked to the public familiarity mentioned in the previous chapter. Recognizing people and places can induce a sense of community. Frequent interactions with the same people, even when they are very short, amplify public familiarity and therefore can increase people’s sense of belonging (Blokland, 2017).

Place making

The practice of community is an active way of experiencing a neighbourhood. Something that is very closely linked to this is the practice of place making, which can help us understand how and in what ways communities are imagined by its participants. Community is not only about relations between people, but also about the interaction of people with places. According to Benson and Jackson (2013, p. 794) people do not select the place they live in to match their habitus, rather, places are made by people through everyday interactions and interventions. These interactions and interventions influence the neighbourhood and the individual. Belonging is not just a feeling: it is the outcome of these practices that take place with and in front of others. It is said that the practice of place is the way to understand how the middle- class experiences belonging. Place making can be considered as the ways in which people relate to and practice place, in other words, the performativity of place and the ‘doing’ of place (Benson & Jackson, 2013) pp. 793-794). This also relates to the processes in which places become valued or devalued, by practice. The category ‘representations of space’, established by Lefebvre (1991) can also be useful to see space-producing processes at work because it explains how spatial practices are related to the images and representations that people have of specific places (like the Kinkerbuurt) or the types of places (the city, the village) (Benson & Jackson, 2013).

21 The second subquestion of this study “How do the urban practices of ‘community’ and ‘place’ interact with feelings of belonging as experienced by residents of the Kinkerbuurt?” relates to what is said above about community and placemaking. The literature above and the upcoming findings in chapter 4, but mainly chapter 5, will help to generate an answer to this question.

Photo 9: Ten Kate market. © N.Sijbrands.

22 3 Methodology 3.1 Qualitative Research

Qualitative methods were used for this study, because I feel like these methods will provide the most information about the topic. Belonging is a feeling that is difficult to quantify, especially because there are so many different dimensions at play. Qualitative methods are desired when a study is concerned with everyday behaviour to provide a deeper understanding of people’s underlying ideas and thoughts (Silverman, 2014), which is definitely the case in this study. This study was conducted both inductively and deductively. Urban theories were collected before starting the research process, but in later stages, after a certain number of interviews were conducted, more theories were gathered. Epistemologically speaking, this research is positioned as being interpretivist, because its aim is to understand the social through an examination of how the respondents in this study interpret their social world. There is no set reality, instead the reality is constructed by its people. Therefore, the ontological position used is that of constructionism, which implies that social processes are the outcome of interactions between individuals (Bryman, 2012).

3.2 Research population

The residents of the Kinkerbuurt are the unit of analysis in this study. The Kinkerbuurt is the area enclosed by the Kostverlorenvaart, Bilderdijkgracht and Kinkerstraat (photo 10) and is part of city district West, which used to be called “Oud-West” (Old-West). The Kinkerbuurt neighbourhood is subdivided in three smaller districts: Da Costabuurt, Borgerbuurt en Bellamybuurt. Some of these names were interchangeably used as synonyms of the Kinkerbuurt during some interviews, but are in fact all part of the area that is called Kinkerbuurt. One interviewee even corrected me when I asked a question about the ‘Kinkerbuurt’ and said, “We are in the Bellamy-buurt” (Willem, 03-05-2019). During the early stages of this research, quite a few people showed an interest in being an interviewee for this study, but when asked where they lived, not all of them lived within these borders. Also, during the interviews some respondents mentioned streets ‘inside’ the Kinkerbuurt, like the Jacob van Lennepkade and Jan Pieter Heijestraat, which by this definition are not actually part of the neighbourhood, as you can see in photo 10 on the next page.

23

Photo 10: Kinkerbuurt and its ‘official’ borders. © N.Sijbrands, Google Maps.

As the people living there felt very much connected to the Kinkerbuurt, the decision was made to include a couple of streets located right next to the Kinkerbuurt area as part of the Kinkerbuurt as well. There is also a school located in this area called the ‘Kinkerbuurtschool’, which made the distinction between the Van Lennep neighbourhood and the Kinkerbuurt even more vague for some of the people I spoke to. All this corresponds with what Agnew (2008) discusses in his article on re-framing border thinking: borders can be problematic and they should not be seen as fixed, but as an evolving construction. For this research, there was one interview with someone who geographically does not live in the Kinkerbuurt (Jacob van Lennepstraat) but has lived in the Kinkerbuurt for almost fifty years before moving a little bit outside of its official borders. He said all of his life still takes place on the Kinkerstraat and Bilderdijkstraat, as well as in Buurtcentrum de Havelaar, a community centre within the Kinkerbuurt as defined for this study. He actually thought he still lived in the Kinkerbuurt, until I showed him what was officially considered as the Kinkerbuurt, which seemed to be quite confusing to him. The Kinkerbuurt’s official borders actually appeared to not be clear for more than just this one respondent with, for example, another respondent saying that she did not know if De Clercqstraat - where our interview took place – was still part of the Kinkerbuurt. To avoid vagueness and confusion, I did not actively search for respondents in this area just outside of the Kinkerbuurt’s ‘official’ borders. Also, none of the observations took place there, in an effort to keep the definition of the research population as clear as possible.

24 The final sample

Finding respondents turned out to be more difficult than expected. People who were approached in the streets, cafes and the community centre were generally speaking a bit reserved and did not understand why an interview with them was necessary, saying ‘better’ people could be approached because others would know more about the neighbourhood than they did. Others were in a rush and had no time. The Kinkerbuurt houses such a large diversity of people that it became necessary to talk to a range of people differing in age, class and ethnicity, as that would provide the most complete view of the situation. The aim was to create a sample consisting of roughly fifty percent women and fifty percent men. In the end, interviews were conducted with seven men and ten women, probably because it was easier for me as a female researcher to get in touch with women. Efforts were made to find people who differed in how long they had lived in the neighbourhood, as that could also have an impact on how they experience feeling at home and belonging in the Kinkerbuurt. Residents who have lived in the neighbourhood for a long time are a particular interesting group to study, because they have experienced all the changes in the Kinkerbuurt firsthand. Six people were interviewed who lived in the neighbourhood for less than five years and are considered short-time residents in this study. The other eleven interviewees had lived in the neighbourhood for a minimum of eight years. A huge effort was made to try to talk to people from non-Dutch descent in shops and stores, outside the mosque and inside the community centre, but people were reluctant to talk to me. Not all of these people were fluent in Dutch or English, which made it more difficult to start a conversation and be clear about my intentions. The Moroccan man and woman I spoke to thought I wanted to talk about their faith, even though I explained what my research was about.

As of January 1st, 2019, the Kinkerbuurt houses 6528 residents, of whom 3241 people are between the ages of twenty and thirty-nine, which is more than half of the population (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2019). For this study, a balance was sought between people from this age group and people who have lived in the neighbourhood for a long period of time, to be able to gather as much information as possible about the area. Some people’s phone numbers were acquired through acquaintances who knew people in the Kinkerbuurt, and interviews were planned through a phone call or by messages on messaging apps. I also got in touch with someone who works at community centre De

25 Klinker, and two interviews were planned through him. After having done the majority of the planned longer interviews, shorter interviews took place on the streets and inside community centre De Havelaar with people that were either standing in the street or spending time inside the community centre. People tended to be more willing to talk if the word ‘interview’ was not used, so therefore I asked these people if they had a couple of minutes to answer some questions about what they think about the neighbourhood. In this thesis, pseudonyms will be used of the people that were interviewed. A list of details from the respondents can be found on the following page, including the pseudonyms that are used in this study.

26

Nr Pseudonym Gender Age Time lived in the Descent Long/short Kinkerbuurt interview 1 Archibald Male 23 Almost two years NL Long 2 Amber Female 25 Since November 2018 NL Long (6/7 months during interview), but also lived there for a year in 2013 3 Denise Female 20 1 year NL Long 4 Stijn Male 20 Almost 2 years NL Long 5 Maxime Female 24 9 months NL Long 6 Valerie Female 34 12 years NL/Indonesian Long 7 Simone Female 40 20 years NL Long 8 Jan Male 89 89 years NL Long 9 Cornelia Female 83 61 years NL Long 10 Willem Male 71 62 years NL Short 11 Denzel Male 58 21 years Surinamese Short

12 Melissa Female 26 3 years NL Long 13 Fatima Female 51 8 years Turkish Short 14 Yasmine Female About At least 13 years Moroccan Short 35-40 15 Ali Male About At least 5 years Moroccan Short 30 16 Alberdina Female 78 45 years NL Short 17 Bert Male 65 23 years NL Long Table 1: Final sample and respondent details.

27 3.3 Research Methods

Exploration

Short conversations with residents were held before the actual fieldwork commenced. These were held with people in the streets, who were asked if they had time to answer a few questions about the neighbourhood. This influenced the next research steps, because it showed what mattered to the people in the neighbourhood. They all enjoyed talking about the Kinkerbuurt, and these conversations showed that practical questions like ‘What are your favourite places in the Kinkerbuurt? And why?’, as well as and short and clear questions like ‘How would you describe the neighbourhood in a few words?’ worked. It also showed that some other questions needed more explanation or had to be reformulated.

Interviews

After this, a trial interview took place with my housemate who has lived on the Tweede Kostverlorenkade for about two and a half years now. After the trial interview, the final list of interview questions was constructed. The first three questions are rather general questions about the interviewee. The following six questions are questions about their first experiences of the neighbourhood, and how they experience the neighbourhood now. Subsequently, more concrete questions were asked, such as: ‘What are your favourite places in the Kinkerbuurt? Why?’ and ‘Does the Kinkerbuurt facilitate your lifestyle?’ to link in with place making and urban consumption. Participants were also asked about the changes in the neighbourhood and whether the interviewee experiences any changes, and if so; how do they feel about this? The fourth set of questions is mostly concerned with feelings of home and belonging. The final part of the interview list centres on connections with others, which is linked to Blokland’s (2017) theory on communities. The complete list of interview questions can be found in the Appendix (8). These sets of questions were broadly used during the longer interviews that lasted between twenty-five and forty minutes. During some of the interviews, more questions were added on the spot to pick up on something the interviewee mentioned. The shorter interviews lasted about ten minutes on average. The list of interview questions was not used for this, but they did encompass broadly the same questions. Everyone was asked about their first impressions of the neighbourhood when they moved there, and to

28 describe the neighbourhood in a few words and what a ‘home’ is to them. The question ‘Do you feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt?’ always followed. These shorter, less formal interviews were not as structured as the longer interviews.

Observations

Besides the interviews, a number of observations took place on the 10th, 11th and 22nd of May 2019, in De Hallen, on the market in the Ten Kate straat, in game café ‘Twee Klaveren’ and coffee bar ‘De Koffiesalon’. These observations were done to gain a deeper understanding of the interactions between people in the neighbourhood, mainly to see who they talk to, if people say hello to each other and how they interact with each other in a more general sense. In some interviews, it was mentioned that different groups of people do live together in this neighbourhood, but do not really interact with each other (more on this can be found in the findings). This was another big impulse for these observations: to see first-hand whether or not this is visible in the interaction on the streets. After having done a couple of interviews and observations, no new information came to the surface anymore and this process was brought to an end, as it had turned out to be too difficult to get in contact with people from a migration background. This means saturation was reached, at least for the group of long-time and short-time Dutch residents. Another part of the fieldwork partly took place before this study actually started. I am myself a resident of the Kinkerbuurt and have gotten to know the neighbourhood through my own experiences. During the course of this research, I also spent a lot of time in the neighbourhood not actually doing research, but these experiences can also provide a source of information for the study. More on this will be explained later on in 4.6 Reflection on own role within research.

29 3.4 Data Analysis

For the data analysis, the software ATLAS.ti was used. I started with initial coding, word by word, and sentence by sentence. Codes that were created during this part of the process were for example: café favourite place, village in the city, expensive houses, every group has their own place, Kinkerstraat is busy, home is knowing your surroundings. This was done to find concepts and themes that are mentioned most often. These codes were very close to the data. After that, more focussed coding took place to find the main concepts for this study (Charmaz, 2014). For this phase of the research ‘smartcodes’ were created, which are like code families or super codes: groups of codes that are related. Codes with the word ‘café’ were created quite a lot in the first phase of coding, so the smartcode café was created. The same applies to ‘Kinkerstraat’ which was also mentioned a lot in many different contexts, so the smartcode Kinkerstraat was made. Two other examples of smartcodes that were created are: opinions about people and opinions about the neighbourhood. The first consisting of codes like ‘people do not care about each other anymore’ and ‘people do not mix’. The second contains codes like ‘multi- cultural’ and ‘I hope it does not get as busy here as in De Pijp’. Out of these smartcodes, the concepts for this study were extracted. For example, the smartcode ‘Home is…’ was used for “What is a home?” in chapter 4.3 and the smartcode ‘Safety’ was used in this same chapter for ‘Safety’.

3.5 Reflection on own role within research During qualitative research, it is of major importance to be aware of one’s own biases and preconceptions that may influence what one is trying to understand. (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). I am a resident of the Kinkerbuurt, and I have lived there for about ten months now. This makes me an insider to the neighbourhood. However, long-time residents can see me as an outsider, and this can have its influence on this research as well. Insider research means that you conduct research with a population of which you are also a member, sharing an identity, language and experiences with the participants of the study. Respondents are usually more accepting towards the researcher when he or she is an insider and are typically more open towards them, which leads to more depth in the gathered data (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). Alongside these positive effects of being an insider during qualitative research, it can be a disadvantage in other ways. The respondent could make assumptions of similarity and this can cause them to fail to explain their own experience fully. Researchers’ perceptions could

30 also be clouded by their own experiences and as an insider, they can have difficulties separating their own experience from those of their interviewees (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). The insider role can also have its impact after the fieldwork and influence the analysis of the data. This can lead to an emphasis on shared opinions and feelings between the researcher and the participants of the study, and to de-emphasize factors that are not shared (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). As mentioned earlier on, long-time residents can consider me an outsider because I have not lived in the Kinkerbuurt for long. Willem, a long-time resident, called me out on this during our interview saying, “You’re not from here, are you girl.” (03-05-2019) When I told him I was actually born in Amsterdam and live in the neighbourhood now, it felt like he took me a lot more seriously than he did before acquiring that information. This shows how much impact an interviewee’s perception can have on the interview itself. In general, I felt that when I told respondents that I am actually ‘from here’, they felt I could relate to them better, which made them tell me more because I would understand what they were talking about. As Dwyer & Buckle (2009) state, holding membership in a group does not mean you are completely the same, and not being a member of a group does not mean you are completely different from the people inside the group. They therefore plead for a space somewhere between insider and outsider: the insider-outsider perspective that occupies the space between (pp. 60-61). You could say I was in the space between during this research, not being a complete insider or outsider but somewhere in between. During the interviews, I did not express any of my own opinions on certain issues. When respondents were interested in my opinion or experiences, we talked about this after the interview had ended, to minimize my influence on their opinions. During the analysis of the data, as mentioned in the section above, I have tried to stay as close to the data as possible, and started with coding many different words and sentences to show all things discussed and to make sure I would not forget anything or think it was not important to the study. By doing this, I hope to have achieved my aim to minimize the impact of my role as an insider.

31 3.6 Limitations of this study During the process of this research, it turned out to be very difficult to get in touch with people from a migration background, even though a huge effort was made. This can be linked to the current debates on the Islam and Muslim people in the Netherlands. For example, Dutch political party PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid/Party for Freedom) has gained a big following over the past years and campaigns against the Islam with the first point in their election program being the ‘de-Islamization of the Netherlands’. 7 In the end, I was able to conduct four short interviews with people from Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese descent. They all told me they felt at home in the Kinkerbuurt, but it still felt like they were not very comfortable speaking to me, as they did not allow me to record the conversations we had. The final sample would have been more diverse and correspond better to the actual population of the neighbourhood, if more people from a migration background had been willing to participate in the interviews. Something that also needs emphasis, is that this is a case study focusing on belonging and feeling at home in a specific context: the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt. The object of this study is not to be generalized to the whole city of Amsterdam or to other parts of the Netherlands. It can however serve as an example of issues of belonging in urban neighbourhoods, which can be related to other similar studies about belonging in the city. For this study there was tried to be as transparent as possible by describing the entire research process to make the study as reliable as possible (Silverman, 2014).

7 https://www.pvv.nl/visie.html.

32 4 Feeling at home in the changing Kinkerbuurt

4.1 Changes in the neighbourhood

This study has chosen the Kinkerbuurt as a research setting, because it is a neighbourhood in Amsterdam that gentrified quickly and yet still has a population that is quite mixed. It is also a neighbourhood that is still very much in transition, with new housing having been built over the past few years and a lot of renovation going on. Also, new cafes and stores open in the Kinkerbuurt on a regular basis. As of January 2019, the Kinkerbuurt housed 6528 people, of whom a little more than half were native Dutch citizens. More information about the make- up of the neighbourhood can be found in Table 2 below.

Kinkerbuurt Number of January 2018 inhabitants Total 6528 Native Dutch 3520 Western 1460 Non-western 1548 Moroccan 401 Table 2: Inhabitants of the Kinkerbuurt categorized by migration background. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, 2019.

The Kinkerbuurt is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam where many people live on a relatively small number of square kilometres. The tram depot of the GVB (Amsterdam’s public transport services) used to be located in the centre of this part of the city, but the GVB moved out in the late 20th century. In the past decades, a lot of luxurious apartments have been built in the Kinkerbuurt and the old tram depot was transformed into a cultural centre called ‘De Hallen’ providing shops, a library and a food court. Many new bars, shops and restaurants opened in the Kinkerstraat, De Clercqstraat and Bilderdijkstraat, but based on my observations, these seem to mainly attract students and expats.

33 Photo 11: Food Hallen. © IAmsterdam, 2019

These are big changes compared to what the Kinkerbuurt was like in the 1940s, starting off as a working-class neighbourhood. Jan (a male participant of 89) elaborated on the history of the Kinkerbuurt as he personally experienced it during the past 89 years. He starts his story with the fact that the Kinkerstraat used to have lots of tall trees, but they were all sawn-off during World War II., when the neighbourhood residents needed the wood to stay warm. He says there were a lot of Jewish people in the Kinkerbuurt until that time. After the war, migrants started to come to the neighbourhood, the first being, in his memory, Italians starting an ice-cream parlour. There were a lot of delicatessen shops spread throughout the neighbourhood at that time, and the market used to be bigger too. He told me that during the past few decades he mostly saw people from Turkish and Moroccan descent moving into the neighbourhood, and that it is now changing again, with more families and young adults moving into the area.

4.2 The Kinkerbuurt as a home

In the end, sixteen of the seventeen interviewees responded with a yes when asked if they felt at home in the Kinkerbuurt. Only Alberdina said she did not feel at home, but she also mentioned that she usually feels like she does not really belong anywhere and that she feels

34 like she is a bit of a loner. She said she did feel at home in her own house though, and that she did not think she would ever really feel at ease anywhere in Amsterdam, due to its general busyness and people’s lack of awareness of each other. The sixteen other respondents mentioned a lot of different reasons to feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt. These reasons ranged from seeing familiar faces every day, to the neighbourhood being a place where you have your memories. Other reasons include: home is being comfortable, home is a recognizable place, home is where my children are, home is knowing people, home is to feel at ease, home is peace and quiet, home is safe. Making the Kinkerbuurt a home to many different people in a lot different ways. Most of the reasons residents feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt will be discussed in the upcoming chapters that discuss feelings of belonging in long-time residents and in the short-time residents who have only lived in the Kinkerbuurt for up to four years. A sense of belonging becomes very clear when interviewees talk about their neighbourhood compared to the rest of Amsterdam. They feel like they belong in the Kinkerbuurt, and they make a very clear distinction between their neighbourhood and the rest of the city of Amsterdam. The respondents mention how busy the city centre is and how they feel like that centre is not theirs anymore, that they do no longer belong there. The following extract from one of the interviews shows very clearly how a respondent’s life is quite centred around her own neighbourhood and how she feels like a visitor or even not very welcome in other parts of the city. The Kinkerbuurt is where she belongs.

Simone: ‘East is already very far away for me. The city centre I never come. Never in South. It is pretty bad, but my whole life solely takes place here. And if I have to go to East for work once in a while, that feels like a huge project. By the way, the kids have hockey in East and my son goes free running in East. Twice a week I have to be there, but then I really am a visitor.

Interviewer: That does not feel like home?

Simone: No, no, no, then I have really left my own neighbourhood. That is true. This neighbourhood is in that sense very much a home.

Interviewer: In that sense, would you say you belong more in the Kinkerbuurt than in Amsterdam, or could you not formulate it that way?

35 Simone: Yes definitely! Because yeah, the centre is not mine anymore. That is where I used to come, when I was young, I used to go out there, etcetera. But now, I have nothing to go there for. Not the Kalverstraat, I hate it all. The Dam. I avoid all that, but that is without any effort because I don’t have… I don’t have to do anything [there]. Unless I have to go to the central station for the train. That is okay. That is not my home. That area belongs to the tourists now I think, that is not really our place anymore. (Simone, 29-04-2019)

She is not the only one who describes the city centre as too busy. When describing the Kinkerbuurt, one respondent notes that “(…) it does not really feel like the city centre Amsterdam or something. Thankfully, because that is too busy.” (Maxime, 15-04-2019).

In his book, Duyvendak (2011) states that in changing neighbourhoods, new immigrants often become homesick for their places of origin, while native residents become nostalgic for the good old days. Denzel and Fatima talked about their place of origin when they were asked where they felt most at home. They mention Suriname and Turkey before they mention their homes in the Kinkerbuurt, but they do also say that, even though they refer to those places as home, this does not have any influence on how much they feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt, which they say they do. Yasmine (22-05-2019) tells me that she feels at home here because she sees her children enjoying the neighbourhood. This does not correspond with the feelings of homesickness that Duyvendak (2011) describes in his book. However, it could be linked to what Duyvendak et. al. (2016) say about how feeling at home is very much connected with certain people, in this case Yasmine’s children, and under certain circumstances, in this case when she sees that her children enjoy a place. Home is not just a physically place, home can be found in people as well, which is the case when you see home as a heaven (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 38). Even though the neighbourhood has changed over the years, people seems to find that these changes are mostly linked to current changes that happen in many places in the western world. For example, Jan describes how decades ago children would play in the streets, even in the evenings. He says that kids do not play in the streets anymore, but that all kids nowadays “always sit inside” and only play with their phones. He attributes this to the current time and general lifestyle of children in 2019 and says that this is not specific for the neighbourhood.

36 4.3 Dimensions of home Long-time residents and feelings at home

Something that typifies the interviewees from the older generation, is that when asked about home, they tend to answer very quickly. It almost seemed like they did not want to think about it. Home is very clearly defined for these people, and it almost seemed like they thought it was a weird question to ask: “What is a ‘home’ to you?” or “What makes you feel at home somewhere?” Willem (71 years old) who was interviewed at the community centre answered that he has always felt at home in the Kinkerbuurt, but he also said that he thought “What is a home to you?” was a bit of a woolly question (NL: ‘zweverige vraag). When asked again, he said he thought the neighbourhood was fine and that he had gotten used to it over time. 83-year- old Cornelia answered with “Yeah, yeah, I think that depends on yourself, that is something that comes from inside actually, huh. We are easily satisfied.” (Cornelia, 01-05-2019). “I am not spoiled. I was an only child, but no. I am not very demanding. Simple,” said Jan (01-05-2019). It looks like this older generation is easily satisfied and takes their homes for granted. Most of these long-time residents moved to the neighbourhood out of necessity; Jan was actually born there. It does not really seem like they made a choice based on where they wanted to live, but more on what was affordable and inside the city at that time. When speaking about home, they mostly refer to their houses, as well as to the street they live in or a bigger part of the neighbourhood. They talk about the past in a very positive way, as a time when the neighbourhood was cosier and livelier (NL: ‘gezelliger’). A striking example of this is offered by Willem, who says that people do not really talk to each other much anymore; “The cosiness and sociability are gone” (NL: “De gezelligheid is eruit.”). He has a good relationship with his neighbours, but things aren´t not what they used to be. He blames this on individualism and the fact that people are not as dependent on each other as they used to be. He tells a story about the past, when his next-door neighbours used to have a phone and he did not. At the time he would visit his neighbours once a week to use their phone, but since he got his own phone, he does not visit them as often. Six respondents who have lived in the Kinkerbuurt for at least twelve years, mentioned – without having been asked– that they feel like people in the neighbourhood are not as open towards each other as they used to be. Decades ago, people spent much more time in the streets, connected with each other, and children would play outside more often. This goes hand in hand with the general trend of western society individualizing (Karp, Stone, Yoels & Dempsey, 2015). Some neighbourhood residents mention that people have become more self-centred and that you

37 can very clearly see the link of this trend with a trend of a change in facilities. Facilities have also become more focused on the individual, with more coffee shops like Lot Sixty-One and Coffee Company opening or being restyled to specifically attract students and young urban professionals (YUP) that enjoy this new urban lifestyle. (Rath & Ardekani, 2018). Another thing that the older residents mention regarding the changes in the neighbourhood, is that people do not really talk to each other anymore, whereas that was always the case in the past. 83-year-old Cornelia recounts that she thinks this trend became much stronger during the past ten years. When asked how they feel about these changes, most of the respondents reacted quite neutrally, saying both negative as positive things about the upswing of ever more coffee bars. They consider them expensive and they do not visit them, but at the same time they also mention these coffee shops when they talk about how much nicer the Kinkerbuurt looks nowadays, compared to ten or twenty years ago. Willem, who is 71, is the only respondent who had only negative things to say about these coffee shops. Another outlier is 40-year-old Simone who has lived in the Kinkerbuurt for twenty years and loves the new coffee shops that have opened. She comes there every day to drink coffee before starting her day at work and is very positive about the entire transformation of the neighbourhood. Another thing concerned with the changes in the neighbourhood are the rents. Long- time residents do notice that the rents go up, but mostly because they notice prices going up around them. There are fewer people like them, because the lower rates are no longer available.

“When someone leaves, not long ago a neighbour next door left, had to go to a retirement home, and then no one our age comes back. It is actually always someone who is younger. Now… the upstairs neighbours are a couple of students and I know that they pay much more than we do.” (Bert, 23-05- 2019).

Cornelia (01-05-2019) also notices the increase of housing prices in the area: “Well the houses have become very expensive here. What is for sale now is almost unaffordable for young people.”. What Bert and Cornelia say serves as examples of how the neighbourhood is changing and becoming less accessible for people with a lower socio-economic status. Their findings at the same time also show that differences between residents are becoming bigger because of the huge difference in rent people pay. When all services and facilities in the neighbourhood

38 become more expensive it can still become difficult for long-time residents, with lower rents, to survive in a gentrified neighbourhood.

Short-time residents and feeling at home

Younger residents of the Kinkerbuurt, who have lived there for a period of up to four years, mostly describe the neighbourhood as being very open and free. 23 -year old Archibald, who has lived in the neighbourhood for almost two years now, describes the neighbourhood as: “A bit reserved, but open. It is… everyone does their own thing, but that is okay. You can just do that.” (Archibald, 06-04-2019). This quote shows both the openness that is typical for younger residents, as well as the individualistic trend discussed earlier. Twenty-five-year-old Amber describes the atmosphere in the Kinkerbuurt as Very free. (…). And yeah, I think it is also very free, because I am walking around without makeup and wearing slippers, and I think that is fine [here], you know. I think, but maybe that is something for the whole of Amsterdam. I am also quite well known in the neighbourhood. I like it very much. (Amber, 08-04-2019).

Again, showing the free, open ambience that younger residents describe. This is in line with Duyvendak’s (2011) description of home as a heaven, describing it as a public place where “one can collectively be, express and realize oneself” (p. 38). A place where “everyone does their own thing” as Archibald (06-04-2019) says. Long-time residents said they moved to the Kinkerbuurt out of necessity because they needed a place close to the city centre, a place that is affordable or in Jan’s case; because he was born there. The reasons to move into the area were completely different for short-time residents that were interviewed. Stijn says “I live on the Kinkerstraat and I live with two housemates. I know them both from university.” (12-04-2019). Archibald also moved to the neighbourhood to live with friends. Denise also lives with friends she knows from university. Maxime moved to the Kinkerbuurt to live with her boyfriend who already lived in the Kinkerbuurt. They looked for a new apartment in the area together because they thought it was a nice neighbourhood that is close to their work. Amber moved back to the Kinkerbuurt after staying in different areas of Amsterdam for five years and says the area is still her favourite neighbourhood in the entire city of Amsterdam. Of all short-time residents only Melissa did not know anyone in the Kinkerbuurt before she moved there, but says she specifically searched for a “nice neighbourhood close to everything” (10-06-2019). The

39 reasons the short-time residents mention for their move to the neighbourhood are interlinked with the notion of ‘elective belonging’ (Duyvendak, 2011) in which people feel they can claim belonging as a result of having chosen to move to that specific area that is in a functional or symbolic way important to them. Most of them choose to live amongst people that are similar to them, people they know. It could be a bit of a coincidence that almost all of the short-time residents that were interviewed made a deliberate choice to move to the area, but it is definitely something that you see developing in the Kinkerbuurt. The fact that they made a deliberate choice to move to the area can play a role in why their answers to “What is a home to you?” are much more thought out than the answers long-time residents gave, because the reason they moved seems to be more thought out as well. Even though it seems like short-time residents moved to the area because they enjoy living with people that are similar to them, most of them do know their neighbours and have a friendly connection with them. For example, Archibald knows the basics about some of his neighbours and describes his relationship with his neighbour Amin.

Interviewer: Could you tell me something about the people that live here?

Archibald: Well those are too many to name them all. My neighbour is Moroccan, but I live underneath an expat and eh there are some older people who have lived here their entire lives, they sit on a pile of gold. And there is youth, but I do not know if they live in this neighbourhood, but they often hang, at that bench that I was talking about earlier. And there are a couple of students, a few, friends I know that live here around the corner.

Interviewer: You were just talking about your Moroccan neighbour. Do you know him? Do you know your neighbours?

Archibald: Yes his name is Amin [pseudonym] and he works in IT. He supplies laptops. I do not know much about him, I mean he is pretty private, but we have talk sometimes when I had a package delivered at his house. That is okay, we are good neighbours. He has a wife and two children. He is older than me.

Interviewer: So when you would see Amin in the streets, would you say hi to him?

Archibald: I say “Hey Amin!”. (Archibald, 06-04-2019).

40 This quote shows amicability between neighbours. All short-time interviewees know at least something about their neighbours and recognize a couple of them. Even who people do not have much in common, they can still have common activities and see each other in the streets because they live nearby (Duyvendak et. al., 2016). These friendly relationships need time to develop but after some time Archibald, among others, now knows some of his neighbours and he feels very much at home.

Photo 12: Business at De Clercqstraat. © Gemeente Amsterdam

Safety

Feelings of home were often associated with safety. Seven out of the eleven people that participated in the longer interviews, mentioned safety and feeling safe as one of the main requirements to feel at home somewhere, as well as a reason why they feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt. When asked about safety, actually all eleven of these respondents said they felt safe or very safe in the neighbourhood, even at night. Blokland (2017) talks about trust when a setting is familiar to someone and when people trust others, and links this to feelings of home and belonging by providing security. The more trust people experience, the safer they feel. Duyvendak (2011) mentions these same things in his discussion of home as a haven, which is concerned with physical and material security and feeling mentally safe in a place. People will feel more mentally safe when they recognize people (), so this also interlinks with the concepts of public familiarity and amicability. An example of this is what Stijn states about walking through the streets of the Kinkerbuurt. He can sometimes feel a bit vulnerable because he is

41 gay, but he never feels unsafe. Earlier on during the interview he says he knows a lot of people in the neighbourhood and he is never alone in the streets.

Yeah, I, eh, basically I have never actually had the feeling, not even at night, that I did not dare to go into the streets or something. I think that it might have something to do with being a boy, but eh sometimes I don’t like it when groups of men pass by, then you feel a bit more vulnerable as a homosexual. But yeah, it is not like, at night I don’t think that I have to be careful, and not during the day… so the feeling of safety is good. (Stijn, 12-04-2019)

Another example of safety that contributes to a sense of home came from Valerie, who said:

I feel very safe in that sense. I have always felt very safe in Amsterdam when you talk about cycling late at night or something. I am never scared. I have also never experienced anything weird in Amsterdam. That it… eh yeah that even at night it is pleasant to cycle, and also through the Vondelpark. (Valerie, 24-04-2019).

Feeling safe at night has been related to a sense of home in previous studies as well, like Ouwehand & Bosch (2016), in which the sense of neighborhood safety at night was quantitatively related to their sense of home in their neighbourhood.

4.4 Diversity and social mixing

Something that residents of the Kinkerbuurt mention quite often when they are asked to describe the neighbourhood in a couple of words, is that it is diverse: “Eh diverse. All kinds of different eh eh nationalities and eh ethnicities that you have here eh (…)” (Denise, 10-04- 2019). Another respondent calls the neighbourhood “multi-cultural” (Amber) and someone else says it is “mixed” (Valerie, 24-04-2019). Not only did they describe the neighbourhood as such, some people also attached great importance to this or mentioned it as one of the reasons why they like the Kinkerbuurt so much. The quote below offers an example of a woman who thinks it is important to teach her children about different cultural backgrounds and therefore says she likes how mixed the neighbourhood is.

“What I think is very important is that in this part of Amsterdam I think you see the Netherlands as it is, it is of course so mixed. Rich, poor, coloured, white. Everything together, many different nationalities together and that is something I think is very important for my kids to see. That this is what the world

42 is and that is not just white people with a lot of money. What you have in villages like Bloemendaal, Aerdenhout, those kinds of villages. So I think that is very important… that our kids also play a lot with children from other cultures and everything is possible [here], that is something I really like.” (Simone, 29-04-2019).

Even though native Dutch residents say they enjoy the mix of nationalities and ethnicities so much, it is striking to hear about how they hardly ever experience any longer encounters with people from a migration background. Most of these white, native Dutch respondents say that there is a huge mix of different kinds of people, but they also say that there is not a lot of mixing between the groups. As mentioned in the methodology section of this study, during the entire research period it has been difficult to conduct interviews with persons with a migration background. Having spoken to three people of respectively Turkish, Surinamese and Moroccan descent, none of them mention any Dutch, white friends or neighbours. Talking to native Dutch neighbourhood residents of the Kinkerbuurt also makes it clear that in general people from all generations and backgrounds manage to live together, peacefully, and that this goes well. This relates to what Duyvendak et. al. (2016) say when talking about amicability; that sometimes people do not have much in common in terms of ethnic, religious and cultural identity, but they can still have common activities. A diversity of people in the Kinkerbuurt sees each other on a daily basis, mainly during short encounters on the streets. They give each other enough space, but also the recognition that they belong at that place. No one seems to mind each other, which also becomes clear during interviews when respondents tell about what kind of people live in the Kinkerbuurt. The groups may not mix, but no one says anything negative about ‘the other’. This forms the foundation for amicability that allows people to feel at home in their neighbourhood. As explained before, all sorts of people live next to each other, but do not really mix or mingle much. When asked if they think there is social mixing in the neighbourhood, Simone answers as followed:

Well it is very difficult actually. Ehm, so eh especially for parents it is difficult to become friends with for example Muslim families, because our cultures are very different. When we organize a social event [with school], Muslim parents don’t come, because they don’t want to eh drink alcohol and eh the other parents do enjoy that very much. So we organize a lunch in the Vondelpark, then they come, but many of them still don’t [come]. There are a couple of them that do luckily come with nice food and stuff, ehm but to be honest, even though we would really like to, it has not happened yet for the

43 Kinkerbuurtschool to eh indeed really mix (…). Also many children from Muslim families that eh my children, yeah where that does not really go well and that is really because of the cultural differences. (Simone, 29-04-2019).

This quote shows that there is a willingness to mix socially, but that there are still things that prevent the actual mixing from occurring. When asked what kind of people live in the neighbourhood, Stijn tells me he sees a distinction between three different groups: a group of older residents, a group of yuppen and students, and a group of residents of Turkish or Moroccan descent. When questioned if he thinks these groups go well together, he answers:

Yes! I really think it goes well here, that people eh aren’t troubled by each other but also that they, with each other that it goes pretty well eh. What you do see in the neighbourhood, is that everyone kind of has their own place, you know. You have those yuppen stores and you also still have the small Turkish and Moroccan fruit and vegetable stores and such and eh so yeah they do not mix very much I think, but they do live next to each other. (Stijn, 12-04-2019)

The difficulty I encountered as a white, native Dutch female living in the Kinkerbuurt in my efforts to conduct interviews with residents from a migration background, could also say something about the lack of social mixing. I experienced a bit of mistrust with the Moroccan man and woman that I spoke with. Even after explaining a little about the reasons I was doing this research, what my research was about and the reason I wanted to talk with them, I got the feeling they still did not really trust why I really wanted to speak with them in particular. They also did not feel comfortable with me recording the interview, because said they did not understand why I had to do that, if I could just take notes. This also gave me a feeling that they did not trust me or my intentions very much.

44 5 Community and places as urban practices

5.1 Communities

Often mentioned in my interviews, by people from different generations, is that home for them is a place with people they know. This can vary from knowing the homeless guy who sells the Straatjournaal (comparable to the British Big Issue) outside the local supermarket, to having friends in the neighbourhood and saying hello to your neighbours. In this sense, home can be embodied by different people who you come across often, who you would miss or at least whose absence you’d notice if they weren’t there anymore. It is a shared history that can be shorter or longer, but everyone who was interviewed mentioned at least one other person they knew in the neighbourhood. In some cases, this was a neighbour that they spoke to, in other cases it was someone who works in a shop they visit regularly. We always take notice of others and these often short interactions we have can be sources for community (Blokland, 2017, p. 86). Blokland and Nast (2014) say belonging has everything to do with recognising and being recognised in local places, which is something of great importance for most of the people in the Kinkerbuurt as well. The quote below clarifies this.

‘The nicest thing about the Kinkerstraat, it is like a small village in Amsterdam. Many people say “yeah you live in Amsterdam, so very anonymous”, but when you live there, you do your groceries in the same store. You know, I get my cigarettes from the same shop, so I know the people in the shop and it quickly turns into your own neighbourhood, and I work on the Kinkerstraat so you start to recognize more and more people and when I walk the streets here I always see costumers of mine. And then you get that feeling of home more and more. (Stijn, 12-04-2019)

The people that you see and expect in the same places, for example the homeless guy who sells newspapers or the people behind the counter of the cigarette shop, are what Milgram (1977) calls ‘familiar strangers’. Even though it’s over forty years since he published this piece, it is still a phenomenon that can be identified in the urban context, in this case the Kinkerbuurt. These familiar strangers can be the people that make you experience a sense of community.

Blokland (2017) says that predictability of cities is important to make sense of everyday situations. When you see the same sort of behaviour in the same places on a daily basis, you start to see that as normal, and as long as things continues in that way, it is easier to make

45 sense of your social world. This contributes to people’s sense of home and where they feel like they belong. In this sense, Maxime tells me: Only my studio was home back then, now all this is home. From the Jordaan to my house, that is what I know so well, that you can just find your house, and then you actually really come home. […] When you come back here, it is really like coming home, so that is good. […] I know all the streets; I do not know the names [of them] but I do not get lost. I can turn left somewhere in a street that I do not know, but that does not make me feel disorientated. It is not so very big anymore; it is manageable now. I always thought I could never live in Amsterdam, way too big, way too busy, but when you start living there […]. I know this very well now, this part, so this is home. It feels like home. You don’t get lost anymore. (Maxime, 15-04-2019).

This is very much in line with what Blokland says about predictability and how this contributes to feelings of home.

5.2 Place making

Throughout this study it has become apparent that neighbourhoods are much more than physical borders and everything that is located within these borders. The Kinkerbuurt can be seen as a social space where people experience feelings of belonging towards. The physical borders of the neighbourhood seem to be much more fluid than its official enclosed by the Kostverlorenvaart, Bilderdijkgracht and Kinkerstraat, as mentioned in chapter ‘3.2 Research Population’. The residents of the neighbourhood have an active role in the making of place in the ways that they relate to and practice place (Benson & Jackson, 2013).

Kinkerstraat and Ten Kate market The Kinkerstraat is often considered as one of the main streets of the Kinkerbuurt. Many respondents explicitly mention the street, because it is seen as very different and separate? from the rest of the neighbourhood which is quieter. De Clercqstraat and Bilderdijkstraat are also mentioned as being busier than the rest of the neighbourhood, but are certainly not mentioned as often as the Kinkerstraat, and neither do people have such a strong opinion about those streets. During my observations on the 10th and 22nd of May 2019 at the Ten Kate Market I found that people did not really mix and were very clustered in groups. Noteworthy is that there was a large amount of lone, older men and women of Turkish and Moroccan descent

46 with children. On those days I also noticed a lot of women who were probably in their thirties and visited the market by themselves. The Kinkerstraat Everyone has an opinion about the Kinkerstraat, whether it is positive or negative. Archibald calls it ‘nice’ and ‘fun’ while Simone says it is not. Some call it ‘busy’, others describe it as being cosy and vibrant (‘gezellig’). The ways in which the Kinkerstraat is valued by these inhabitants of the Kinkerbuurt, has everything to do with how these people ‘do’ this place: place making (Benson & Jackson, 2013). For instance, Simone describes a situation in which she tries to cross the street with her two young children and therefore calls the street ‘busy’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘not nice’. She judges the Kinkerstraat according to her experiences with her children and for this reason she sees the street very differently compared to, for example, Stijn who works in a coffee bar in the Kinkerstraat. Stijn describes the Kinkerstraat as a small village in itself. He knows many people who live or work there and has really made it his home, spending most of his time in the Kinkerstraat. There is a clear distinction between how these two people experience the same place because of how they interact with it. For Stijn the Kinkerstraat is almost a perfect example of Blokland’s (2017) ideal-typical relational setting of belonging, in which there is a balance between strong intimate bonds and the strong anonymity of interdependency. The Kinkerstraat can in this sense be interpreted as his comfort zone. In Simone’s case, the Kinkerstraat is everything except comfortable, because she feels it is an unsafe environment for her children, which makes her behave in a certain way: she ‘does’ the Kinkerstraat differently than Stijn.

Photo 13 : Kinkerstraat. © Puur Makelaars.

47 Community centre: De Klinker & De Havelaar

Before even doing any real interviews, the people that were spoken to in the exploratory phase suggested talking to people in the community centres, because the people there were supposedly very involved with the neighbourhood. After the interview with Valerie, who has done work for both De Klinker and De Havelaar in the past, I got in touch with someone who works at De Klinker and spoke to Jan and Cornelia who both visit De Klinker almost daily. They describe it as a place where they meet a lot of people and can get food that is good value for money. They enjoy the terrace where there is no traffic nearby and Cornelia sees it as a place where she feels at home because she can have a nice chat with people she knows. It really is a meeting place to them. As De Klinker also comprises a home for the elderly, it is a place where they can meet people of about the same age. Jan says he usually talks to the same people every time, but that he knows many different people there and always greets everyone. Going to De Klinker has become part of an almost daily routine for Jan and Cornelia, in which they regularly encounter other people in the same situation and place, something that according to Blokland (2017) attributes to a sense of community for people. The same thing can be said about De Havelaar, which from my experience hosts a bigger variety of people. There were more people there from a migration background, and also people in their forties that you would not find at De Klinker because their public is older. What is the same for both places is the sense of community they create, by having visitors that encounter each other on a regular basis. The community centres bring people together and may be considered as an embodiment of ‘heaven’, a place where one can fully be himself or herself, with people who are likeminded (Duyvendak, 2011). Even though the group of people who visit De Havelaar is more mixed in terms of age and ethnic background I have not seen anyone who seemed to be under thirty, thirty-five even after numerous visits. As a 23-year-old I felt out of place and a little bit scared to enter every time, even though the community centre is freely accessible to everyone and actually has a target audience of residents of the neighbourhood which I am. In this sense, both community centres seem to try to stimulate social mix but are only visited by a limited group of people.

48

Photo 14: Community centre De Havelaar. © Iamsterdam.

Cafes and bars

Places that are mentioned most often by respondents are definitely the cafes in the Kinkerbuurt. Almost all interviewees mention at least one café, whether that is a beer café or coffee bar, where they feel very much at home. Strikingly, not one café is mentioned more than once, which shows that a café in itself can offer a safe place to urban consumers like Zukin (2008) says. The way respondents talk about places where they drink their coffee and places where they go for an alcoholic beverage is exactly the same. Both can function as a “second home” for people because they spend so much of their time there and know everyone who comes there, at least this is true for Amber, Denise and Stijn. During the interview, they all say they spend a lot of their time in one particular café and they also tell me about people they know there, which explains the biggest part of the reasons they feel so very much at home in those places. This can again be linked back to community as an urban practice (Blokland, 2017). Recognizing people and frequent interactions with these same people, even when they are very short, can induce a sense of community and for this reason increase people their sense of belonging. These two things play big roles in a variety of bars and cafes. During my observations on the 11th of May 2019 during the afternoon I visited game café ‘Twee Klaveren’ where I was the only woman in the entire café except for the two ladies behind the bar. There were groups of older men – all of them at least above the age of sixty, but most looked older – who were playing card games in small groups. I actually live really close to this

49 game café and always notice the same groups of men playing games there. During weekends and at night the café attracts an audience that is more mixed with younger people playing games in groups there, but on weekdays during the day it seems to attract the same groups of men every time. What happens here is that these elderly men encounter the same men in the same situation and at the same place quite often, which induces a sense of community. This also interlinks with the expectation for behaviour to be considered normal, which is very important for the social life in cities to thrive. Continuity is important to make sense of everyday situations and is connected with experiencing particular performances of people in a frequent way, which is what they see happening at the cafes. They see the same faces, and the owners of those faces order the same thing and hang out with the same people every time. Stijn explains that two elderly women visit the café he works at about once a week, where they always order the same coffee and sit in the same spot. This also pictures the café as a heaven in the neighbourhood: a place with people you know, who you have a history with, even when they are just frequent brief encounters. It can even be seen as a haven, which usually relates to the home itself, but to these three interviewees it seems they spend almost as much time there as they do inside their own house. It can be a haven because of its predictability, which makes it a place for relaxation and domesticity. However, what can be a safe space for the three respondents mentioned above, can be a terrible place for someone else to spend their time (Zukin, 2008). Valerie says that some of these cafes try to create an ambience that is aimed at the individual and promote an individualistic lifestyle, which she dislikes. Bert, who is sixty-five, even says he feels that some cafes are not for him, like he does not really belong there because of the young crowd it attracts. “(…) walk past a café with only young people, yeah I have no business there then. I would not easily go and sit there, no.” (Bert, 23-05-2019). Valerie and Bert see these cafes in an extremely different way than Amber, Denise and Stijn do. The same places can be interpreted in complete opposite ways when people ‘do’ a place in a different way. When you go somewhere often because you enjoy the atmosphere there or because you work there, this already makes you perform differently in the same place. When someone does not like a place at all because they do not recognize themselves in that place (when the crowd is younger than they are), it also makes them act in a certain way, showing the effect of place making. Interestingly, both Valerie and Bert still admit that there are some coffee bars where they do enjoy spending their time. Valerie even mentions ‘De Koffiesalon’ as somewhere she likes to spend time every once in a while, which is a place that is used a lot by students and young professionals to work at.

50 On the 10th of May I also sat down in ‘De Koffiesalon’ at the Kinkerstraat for a cup of coffee where I mostly saw men and women in their twenties to forties, by themselves. Most of them were using their laptops, which made it look like they were doing work. De Koffiesalon is an example of a place that makes use of (consumer) lifestyle profiling, as Ouwehand & Bosch (2016) call this. The type of branding De Koffiesalon uses is very much focussed on young individuals, who want to work from a flexible workspace, by having a large table in the middle and high bar stools towards the windows, as you can see in the photo below. These seats in the middle and next to the windows are the ones that were taken by people that could be described as ‘young urban professionals’. There was also an older lady with two young children, probably a grandma with her grandson and granddaughter. Everyone seemed to be focussed on themselves or in the case of the older lady, on the two children. No one really spoke to each other. At the time I visited the café, the older lady with the two children were the only people using the seats in the back of the café that seemed to be made to chill.

Photo 15: De Koffiesalon. © Sanne Nadine Hes.

To conclude, it seems like everyone has their own place or places in the neighbourhood where they feel very much at home; for some this is a bar they work at, for others it is a community centre they visit almost daily. The Kinkerbuurt offers a huge variety of places that residents can make their own and everyone does this differently. However, because everyone has their

51 own places, different social groups do not mix very much. Younger people usually visit different cafes than older residents do and the community centres also only seem to attract a particular group of people. No one really seems to consider this as a problem because there are still places for everyone to go and be themselves. Even though they go to different places, the way they talk about it is the same. They ‘do’ place in the same ways: they have short encounters with people that are familiar to them, relax in places they feel comfortable in and they judge places based on their previous experiences of them. Some places have become part of people their daily routines. Notable is that none of the interviewees say anything about facilities disappearing over the past decade. They only talk about places that arrived, not about places that left. This may be because none of their favourite places have disappeared. They still have their own places where they can get their coffee for a euro and a burger for four euros, instead of the more expensive coffee bars and restaurants that are aimed at a different audience. So it seems like long-time residents do not really mind these changes, and that is most likely due to the continued existence of their own favourite places. They do not care that there are more expensive places to eat burgers, as long as there are still places that sell them at a price they are willing to pay. During all the interviews, whenever I asked about favourite places in the Kinkerbuurt, no one gave me the same answer. It seems like the street scene and its stores, cafes and restaurants are still mixed enough for everyone to feel like they still belong there. An important question is if the situation will stay like this. The neighbourhood is still in transition and you still see Turkish greengrocers disappearing, making room for expensive coffee bars (Van Bergeijk, 2017) that are in line with the wishes of newcomers who prefer other places than long-time residents do. Interestingly, these newcomers are not seen as the culprits in this situation. As said before, long-time residents do notice the changes in the neighbourhood, however, during the interviews no one was ‘blamed’ of the arrival of, for example, the more expensive shops and cafes. A very probable reason for this can be explained with the use of the concept of ‘amicability’. Students and young urban professionals are, at least after some time has passed, being recognized by their neighbours and also get the recognition that they belong at that place (Duyvendak et. al., 2016). Due to the interactions the newcomers have with long-time residents, even when they are just brief encounters, it can make the short-time residents part of the community (Blokland, 2017). As soon as these younger newcomers are seen as part of the community, it becomes less likely for them to be seen as a terrible evil-doer, just because of the interactions they have with people in their neighbourhood.

52 6 Conclusion and discussion

Future research and policy

This research has helped provide insight into the feelings of belonging of residents of the Kinkerbuurt. Its aim was not to be generalized to other neighbourhoods in or outside of Amsterdam, but to provide the most complete and accurate sketch of belonging of residents of the Kinkerbuurt in times of gentrification. Now that we know more about these feelings of belonging, an advice for future research can focus more on what can be done to make sure everyone maintains these positive feelings about their neighbourhood. Some respondents mentioned that they enjoyed the mix that the Kinkerbuurt is now and that they would not want the neighbourhood to turn into a new De Pijp, with “too many hipster bars” (Melissa, 10-06-2019), or become part of the city centre as residents try to create distance between their ‘own’ part of the city and the part that “belongs to the tourists (Simone, 29-04-2019). This research could help future social projects in the Kinkerbuurt to find a relevant focus. Luckily, most people do still feel very much at home in the Kinkerbuurt, but especially trends of individualism and the lack of social mixing are considered problems by some residents. The latter was also experienced during the course of this research and can be studied further. One suggestion might be to work with someone from a migration background in that case, to increase the chances of being able to talk to more people from migrant families. Some interviewees also made it clear that they see the neighbourhood become less accessible for people with a lower socio-economic status. Differences between residents are becoming bigger but still seem to be manageable now. For a balance in the mix of people, and for everyone to still feel at home in the neighbourhood, it is important to find out if people with less money can still live in this neighbourhood in a couple of years time. For future policy, it can also be very relevant to know how people feel about changes in the area, which is also something this study can give insights into. Policymakers try to cultivate strong relationships between residents of mixed neighbourhoods. They do this by trying to create social mix. However, this study showed that in mixed neighbourhoods there is little actual social mix between residents of different backgrounds. Duyvendak et. al. (2016) propose that a good sense of belonging in a neighbourhood requires lighter relationships, in the form of amicability, than these policymakers try to create. As said earlier in this conclusion, amicability is a clear example of an element that contributes to feelings of belonging to residents. How people ‘do’ place and ‘do’ community can be influenced in policy

53 and for this reason contribute to positive of negative feelings of home (Van der Graaf & Duyvendak, 2009).

Conclusion This study shows how different people can relate to a neighbourhood in different ways, by asking and answering the following research question: ‘How do residents in the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt experience belonging in various ways?’ Different aspects of home were used to discuss belonging in this thesis, including: ‘home as a haven and home as a heaven’ (Duyvendak, 2011), safety, social mixing and, ‘community as an urban practice’ (Blokland, 2017), the last being interlinked with place making. Public familiarity and amicability also turned out to be important aspects of feeling at home for the majority of the respondents used in this study. On the basis of the findings the two subquestions - that were introduced in the introduction - can be answered. Three elements of feeling at home can be concluded, answering the first subquestion: What elements of ‘feeling at home’ play a role in residents’ feelings of belonging in the Kinkerbuurt?” First, short-time residents describe the neighbourhood as a place with a very free and open ambience which is in line with the concept of ‘home as a heaven’ (Duyvendak, 2011). Second, amicability and public familiarity seem to be important factors for people to feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt. In relation to belonging, is the recognition of places and faces in the neighbourhood, which is part of the concept of public familiarity. Seeing the same people in the same places can generate a sense of belonging, by making the social life more predictable (Duyvendak, 2011; Blokland, 2017). People from all ages and backgrounds manage to live together, peacefully, in the Kinkerbuurt. Particularly familiar strangers can strengthen these feelings of belonging and increase the experience of normalcy to be able to make sense of everyday situations (Milgram, 1977; Blokland, 2017). Third, feelings of home were also frequently associated with safety, and feeling safe in a neighbourhood seemed to be one of the main requirements for a place to be a home. This can be linked to Duyvendak’s (2011) concept of ‘home as a haven’.

Based on the findings, the second subquestion “How do the urban practices of ‘community’ and ‘place’ interact with feelings of belonging as experienced by residents of the Kinkerbuurt?” can also be answered. Residents of the neighbourhood play an active role in the making of place and all ‘do’

54 place in different ways. However, even though they go to different places, the way they talk about these places is almost the same for everyone: having short encounters with people that are familiar to them, relaxing in places that they feel comfortable in and judging these same places based on the history they have with those places. The experience of community is interlinked with how people make a place and a sense of community is experienced by residents of the Kinkerbuurt in the frequent interactions they have with the same people, even when they are very short (Blokland, 2017; Duyvendak, 2011).

The answers to both subquestions together form an answer to the main question of this study: ‘How do residents in the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt experience belonging in various ways?’. Even though the Kinkerbuurt has changed a lot over the past decades, almost everyone that was interviewed still feels very much at home with sixteen out of seventeen interviewees describing their feelings of home and belonging in the neighbourhood in a positive way. Speaking about home and belonging in this study certainly did not only concern the domestic sphere, but could for all but one participant be broadened to some places in the neighbourhood, or even the entire neighbourhood and its surroundings. This study has shown that gentrification does not have to be a problem, as long as the people living in the area still have their own places they can go to. The Kinkerbuurt seems to offer a good mix of spaces, in which most interviewees have found a few places they feel comfortable in. Most interviewees have their own place in the neighbourhood, besides their own home, where they feel at home, whether that is a café, the community centre, an entire street or just one simple bench next to a canal. It is not only the young residents with a high socio-economic status who enjoy ‘hipster’ coffee bars – some long-time residents spend their time there as well, showing that gentrification is not as black and white as younger, richer people coming to the neighbourhood and transforming the neighbourhood in a (upper-) middle class playground. This research shows that there is a solid basis for a future in which everyone can feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt, as almost all interviewees do now. However, ongoing debates about the rise in housing prices and gentrification in the neighbourhood (Savini, et.al. 2016; Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015) create doubts about what the neighbourhood will look like in ten years time. Will there still be a place for people like Willem and Alberdina, who have lived in the Kinkerbuurt for decades., but also experience this rise in housing prices and might not be able to afford them in the future?

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60 8 Appendix: List of Interview Questions

- Tell me something about yourself. - How old are you? - Where did you live before you moved to the Kinkerbuurt?

- When did you move to the Kinkerbuurt? Why? - What did you think of the Kinkerbuurt when you had just moved here? What were your first impressions? - How would you describe the neighbourhood in a few words? - How would you describe the ambiance in the Kinkerbuurt? - How do you feel about living in this neighbourhood? - Do you feel safe in the Kinkerbuurt?

- What does a typical (week/weekend) day for you look like? - Do you feel like the Kinkerbuurt facilitates your needs? Does the Kinkerbuurt facilitate your lifestyle? - What are your favourite places in the Kinkerbuurt? Why? - Are there places that you avoid in the neighbourhood? Why? - Do you feel like this neighbourhood has changed over time? How do you experience this? How do you feel about this? - What does an ideal neighbourhood look like for you?

- What is a ‘home’ to you? What makes a ‘home’? What are the things that make you feel at home somewhere? - Could you think of a place or places where you feel at home? - Do you feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt? Why? Why not? - Are there specific places in this neighbourhood where you feel at home?

- What kind of people live here? Do you know (some of) them? - Do you know your neighbours? Do you recognize people in the neighbourhood? do you say hi to people in this neighbourhood? - Do you feel like you are part of the Kinkerbuurt? - Is there any other place where you would like to live? Or: Is there somewhere where you would rather live than here?

- Do you have any questions for me?

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