The proposal to move Amsterdam’s red light district to an “erotic center” elsewhere in the city has been given the green light.
The Amsterdam City Council last week voted in favor of relocating the district – which has become a popular tourist attraction – after Mayor Femke Halsema argued that the women who work in the brothels often mock and abuse visitors in the facing, reports The Guardian.
Halsema has long wanted to protect De Wallen – the largest and centrally located red light district in Amsterdam – from tourists’ squinting eyes. In 2019, she proposed several possible changes, including closing brothels in front of the window, reducing the number of licenses granted to brothel operators, paying customers just to enter the district aisles or moving the entire district elsewhere .
Amsterdam’s latest proposal follows previous initiatives to limit so-called ‘party tourism’ and guided tours through the city’s Red Light district.
(Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty Images)
“Relocation of prostitution is an option. We have not yet worked out how we should do it, but we must dare to put an end to prostitution in the Red Light District,” she told Dutch news agency Het Parool in 2019.
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Representatives from across the political parties in the city finally agreed last week to vote in favor of setting up an ‘erotic center’ outside the centrally located De Wallen area. A new location has not yet been determined, but it will probably be far from any of the other tourist attractions in Amsterdam, reports The Guardian.
“This is about a restoration of Amsterdam as a visitor city. Tourists are welcome to enjoy the beauty and freedom of the city, but not at all costs,” said Dennis Boutkan of the Dutch Labor Party, according to the statement last week. .
Visitors crowd the red-light district in Amsterdam after Dutch brothels were allowed to reopen after coronavirus closures in July.
(Kenzo Tribouillard / AFP via Getty Images)
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However, not everyone is so excited about the news. Red Light United, a coalition of more than 100 sex workers currently working in the De Wallen brothels, feels that this decision proves that the mayor is not listening to us. Representatives argue that the move will ‘primarily be an expensive fiasco for the city’, while doing little to ensure the livelihoods of the prostitutes who will have to move to a ‘largely empty erotic center’.
“It is about restoring Amsterdam as a visitor city. Tourists are welcome to enjoy the beauty and freedom of the city, but not at all costs,” said Dennis Boutkan of the Dutch Labor Party about the vote last week.
(Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty Images)
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The news of the city council’s decision comes just weeks after Mayor Halsema submitted a proposal to ban non-residents from buying cannabis products at the city’s marijuana-tolerant coffee shops, in an initiative aimed at diverting foreign visitors to be frightened of ‘soft tourism’.