Love thy neighbor? Remnants of the social-mix policy in the Kolenkit neighborhood, Amsterdam

In the mid-1990s, one of the main objectives of housing policy in the Netherlands was to stimulate the integration of diverse socio-economic groups through housing strategies, with the goal being to create social cohesion and to address the problems encountered in low-income neighborhoods. Existing literature has studied the impact of social mix policies and policy interventions, concentrating on such outcomes as the spatial consequences of these policies in post-war neighborhoods; macro scale transformations in social mix areas; or shared perceptions of community in gentrifying neighborhoods. Taking a different perspective, this paper studies the impact of such policies at the individual interaction level to assess whether social mix policies can lead to new forms of interaction between the existing residents and newcomers, and consequently, to further cohesion in the area or city from a broader perspective. The paper studies the interaction between new and former neighbors inside out in a special area, Amsterdam Nieuw West neighborhood, Kolenkitbuurt Zuidelijk Veld 1–2, which is recognized as being one of the most deprived neighborhoods in the country. The research of the Kolenkitbuurt case shows clearly that social interactions between the Dutch-Turkish and the new native Dutch residents have been limited to more casual or neither positive nor negative interactions.