As multifunctional places that combine shopping and hospitality with public space and residential functions, urban consumption spaces are sites where different normative orders surface and sometimes clash. In Amsterdam, such a clash emerged over touristification of consumption spaces, eroding place attachment for local residents and urging the city government to take action. Based on policy analysis and interviews with entrepreneurs and key informants, we demonstrate how Amsterdam’s city government is responding to this issue, using legal pluralism that exists within formal state law. Specifically, the city government combines four instruments to manage touristification of consumption spaces, targeting so-called tourist shops with the aim to drive them out of the inner city. This strategic combination of policy instruments designed on various scales and for different publics to pursue a local political goal jeopardizes entrepreneurs’ rights to legal certainty. Moreover, implicitly based on class-based tastes and distrust towards particular minority groups of entrepreneurs, this policy strategy results in institutional discrimination that has far-reaching consequences for entrepreneurs in itself, but also affects trust relations among local stakeholders.
This article explores cooperation between a commercial supermarket chain and an environmental non-governmental organization linking it to consumer perception of the “The Super Animals” collectable cards promotion initiative. The case study focuses on one particular joint project involving Animal Cards that was initiated by the supermarket Albert Heijn and the World Wide Fund for Nature in The Netherlands. Based on this case, environmental non-governmental organizations’ strategic choices in the context of contesting discourses of sustainability and consumption, as well as implications for environmental education, are addressed. This article combines three strands of the literature – on sustainable consumption, on strategic cooperation between commercial companies and environmental non-governmental organizations and on environmental education. It is argued that the Animal Cards initiative presents an ambiguous case by both attempting to enhance environmental awareness and promoting consumption, opening up questions about the value of such cooperative ventures to the objectives of environmental education. It is concluded that cross-sector partnerships have the potential to lead to improvements in corporate social responsibility and environmental awareness among consumers but simultaneously pose the danger of undermining the critical stance toward consumption. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540514556170 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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This study proposes a framework to measure touristification of consumption spaces, consisting of concentration of retail capital, business displacement and standardization of the consumption landscape. This framework is tested using business registration data and rent price estimates for consumption spaces in Amsterdam between 2005 and 2020. Touristification emerges from concentrations of retail capital and standardization, but occurs without causing significant business displacement. A cluster analysis identifies different variations of touristification. Besides the more typical cases these include nightlife areas, gentrifying consumption spaces and specialized retail areas. This suggests that local contingencies cause consumption spaces to respond differently to increasing tourism.
