"The City is Collapsing Under Our Very Own Eyes": Spaces and Emotions of the Dutch Urban Crisis

This article investigates both the physical and imaginary manifestations of the Dutch urban crisis of the 1960s and 1970s, taking Amsterdam’s inner city and the modernist Bijlmermeer estates as case studies. The main objective is to examine how political and planning elites as well as media outlets mobilised fear in their discussions of the crisis, and to a lesser extent how local residents responded. It will be shown that the actors in this article consciously and unconsciously contributed to a broader crisis narrative aiming at swift decision-making and delegitimisation of the protests against urban re-development. The article also shows how generational conflict, class struggles, and racist stereotypes significantly influenced the crisis discourse as well as policy and planning solutions.