#Wallen2020: a counter-manifesto

This counter-manifesto sheds a new light on Amsterdam's Red Light District, and seeks to change the prevailing discourse about a neighborhood that is supposedly 'out of control'. It is an urgent call against reckless interventions by local authorities and for safeguarding its unique qualities.



"Divergent, close-knit communities are permanently based in the area. Sex workers, artists, student fraternities, Coptic entrepreneurs, religious groups, a large Chinese and queer community. Large crowds fill the area from the late afternoon onwards, enhancing a – for Amsterdam unusual – feeling of sensory intensity, limitless expectation, needless friction and positive disorientation."



"The Amsterdam Red Light District is a unique part of the city. Appreciate the unique qualities, strengthen them where necessary, and, above all, let it be what it is and what it wants to be. Stop the alarmism. Stop the bourgeois, revanchist moralism that seeks to draw the last bit of unpolished urban space into the rest of the city."





Published on wallen2020.nl in March 2020, days before the start of the corona lockdown.