Amsterdam’s ongoing struggle with its image as a place open to rowdy carousers in search of sex and drugs has shifted to a new arena with plans released by a council consultant for what would amount to a municipal brothel to replace the city’s famed Red Light District.
The city’s overtourism complaints have long focused on the city’s cannabis coffee houses and the Wallen district where prostitutes advertise themselves in red-lit windows and until recently crowds of tourists have congregated or taken tours to gawk at them.
But the proposal by the consultants, released by Council members, for a five-story ‘erotic center’ is unlikely to put an end to controversy, not least because it is likely that few if any of the nine possible locations proposed for it will welcome it. The sites are scattered around the city, including one near a major exhibition center.
The proposal calls for a five-story building incorporating two bars or restaurants, spaces for sex shows, relaxation rooms for off-duty sex workers, erotic shops and a hundred small rooms where prostitutes could meet with customers. The city has said the arrangement would help it fight human traficking and exploitation.
The next steps include consultation with all stakeholders and organizations; the plan has already drawn fire from sex worker organizations who are not onboard with leaving the traditional area and complain that hundreds, not one hundred, rooms are needed.
This is the latest in a long history of efforts to move, shrink or regulate the industry in Amsterdam, which have ended in failures of one sort or another.
In this case, part of the aim was to remove it from the mass-tourism sector; the document says that ‘The erotic centre is not aimed at the kind of “leering tourist” who often comes to the red light district.’ ‘This kind of visitor only comes to look and does not become a client. The intention is to discourage this kind of tourist via one, monitored entry to the erotic centre, possibly with an entry price. The erotic centre is only for adults.’
And perhaps only for consultants, planners and dreamers. But don’t laugh at them. Seriously. Because the City Council has meantime banned the sale or use of laughing gas in the city. It’s become a popular entertainment in clubs, but has serious health risks.
