Designing the Amsterdam Red Light District

This study broadly explores urban prostitution. Specifically, it examines the urban renewal of the Amsterdam Red Light District, locally known as De Wallen. Amsterdam’s famous Red Light District is a legal place of prostitution, a global sex industry hub, and a mass tourism and entertainment zone. The district represents an intrinsic and authentic part of the city because of its long history and the specific type of prostitution that has developed there–the red light window. But recently public perception has shifted. The district is increasingly seen as a foreign, crime-ridden area, and a place of sexual exploitation. As a response, in 2007, Amsterdam’s city council launched Project 1012, a large-scale urban renewal plan to restructure Amsterdam’s city center, with the major goal of substantially limiting sex industry presence in De Wallen. Shifting focus from legal and ethical issues surrounding the sex industry, but not omitting them, this study looks at the spatial environments of urban sex commerce. The study has two main goals: 1) to detail the self-design of the sex industry in De Wallen, and 2) to look at the way professional designers redesign the district and reshape the city’s sex industry. The study presents archival and ethnographic research to show how the sex industry organizes itself and self-designs spaces for sex commerce, opening up new terrain through which to understand this complex and contradictory sector. Through a genealogy of De Wallen, it also connects the urban spatialities of sex work to specific moral discourse about prostitution, showing that urban spatial forms of sex commerce are key discursive sites. Ultimately, the study zeros in on new urban design ideology and practice, demonstrating how they transform and dematerialize sex work in the city, in the process erasing vernacular city spaces like the Red Light District. The study’s design lens uncovers a complex relationship between the visual and highly aestheticized design practices in the district, and the hidden politics and problems facing sex workers. It problematizes the market model of prostitution and sheds much needed light on the effects of urban design on sex work in the city.