and Edward Soja amongst the many who praised it as a just city. Much of this idealization did in fact derive from the fact that Amsterdam outperformed other and in particular American cities on the basis of criteria such as equitable housing, sustainability, health and welfare (see: Gilderbloom, 2008). But, to Uitermark, a more important precondition for the just city is that residents have control over their living environment, meaning that they engage with the polity of which they form part.

In the 1970s, Amsterdam witnessed the momentum of its Squatting movement as a major political force against the imposition of capitalist fantasies upon urban space. By preventing space from being redesigned to maximize profit, squatters contributed a great deal to the propagation of an alternative view of thecity, grounded in de-commodification of the housing stock, universal accessibility and maximized affordability, resident engagement and direct democracy (Uitermark, 2006). However, in the late 1980s with the introduction of neoliberal ideologies to housing policies, the interaction among the grass-roots movement and national policies started to change. Soon housing subsidies to promote housing construction were cut back and privatization was promoted as the preferred means for upgrading. As a response, the housing stock began to segregate along socio-economic and (at a later stage) ethnic lines. The interaction officially came to an end in 2010 when the Dutch government banned and criminalized Squatting.

The Case of Op de Valreep

What you just read was a long but important preface to the story I would like to tell now. The story of Op