Die Lehre aus Amsterdam: Neue Urbanität in der alten Stadt

Cultural industries as an instrument seem to offer a way to revitalize derelict areas in and around the urban core that have been blighted by deindustrialization in the 1970 and 1980s. In this article, we explore how cultural industries have affected two such areas close to the Amsterdam central station. One area, Oosterdokseiland, is an example of top-down planning aimed at creating a museum cultural district with large cultural institutions as the municipal library, a music hall, and a museum as large anchors. The other area, the former docklands adjacent to the Oosterdokseiland, was planned as a monofunctional residential area in the 1990s. It nevertheless developed recently into an area of cultural industries. Many businesses in the field of cultural industries have been started there, turning the area through bottom-up initiatives into a fledgling cultural industries district. After having presented a more general analysis of the urban transformation, we analyse these two cases. We end with the wider implications which can be drawn from these cases. All plans for new urbanity in old cities can only work if there is a sound basis of old urbanity.