Daily street life

Wednesday around 4 pm, school was over, and the sun was shining. Guys were standing on the streets, kids were playing on the squares and mothers were walking with their prams. It was the first time that we noticed a light busyness on the streets of the Diamantbuurt. Later that day, a street coach told us that warm weather causes a lively, but at the same time a tense atmosphere in the neighborhood. Especially on the big squares there were many people around. We situated ourselves mainly on those places and observed the street life of the Diamantbuurt. 
  On big squares as the Smaragdplein and the Hendrik de Keijserplein many kids around the age of 12

Hendrick de Keijserplein

were playing soccer, mostly boys. Around those soccer fields some younger children, boys and girls, were playing different games. The squares are a good place for those kids to play because there is no traffic that can bother them, and at the same time, the Smaragdplein is surrounded by institutions meant for children. For example, there is a day care provider for children called De Kleine Wereld, where they can walk in and out whenever they want.

        Besides children, many people are walking calmly over the squares. Some men and women seem to enjoy the nice weather, have a little chat with passersby and slowly walk further. It looks like they know that those squares are the places where they can run into people they know and can have a chat with.

According to Danish architect Jan Gehl those areas can be seen as an outdoor place with a high quality since the good physical conditions bring people together. It became an environment where a ‘broad spectrum of human activities is possible.’ It invites people to ‘stop, sit, eat, play, and so on.’ People who live in the neighborhood know that those squares are places where people come together and where they have some social interaction.

Tensions
The Diamantbuurt has had a bad reputation ever since a journalist laid his eyes on a specific conflict in the neighborhood which he employed in order to have a ‘juicy’ story in the newspaper. Sociologist Anouk de Koning, whom we have introduced in a previous post, questioned the journalist’s approach and reckoned that in his story many voices remained unheard. She qualitatively investigated the neighborhood and found opposed results. Many residents showed contentedness about the neighborhood and it was not as much of a war-zone as the newspapers had made it seem. However, authority still clings on to the idea that the Diamantbuurt is prone to tension. Despite it having decreased over the past few years, different parties hold on to the idea that the area demands close monitoring. To what extent it is indeed necessary, is beyond our judgment: only extensive research might be able to show. However, our own observations and spontaneous interviews can provide us with clues.
First of all it is important to establish criteria which will provide the framework for research and expose the factors which create tension. Tension is most likely to arise in spaces where different actors converge. Therefore, our focal point will be street corners and public squares. Before we are able to analyze these, we will give a brief outlay of the area.

The Diamantbuurt is a densely concentrated block of predominantly social housing (in the past few years gradually turning into privately owned housing). Recreation in the area is rather limited and only a few neglectable patches of green adorn the neighborhood. These are not very accessible because they are fenced and merely seem to have a decorative function. If a resident wants to sit down and enjoy the outdoors, he or she has to turn to the nearby Sarphatipark. Furthermore, there are two squares located in this neighborhood, one of them being notorious for serving as a breeding ground for young criminals. It is the Smaragdplein, a square which has been the site for media coverage ever since ‘the Bert and Marja affair’ of 2004 (see previous blog post). The other one is the Henrik de Keijserplein, which has been incorporated in the block since the Diamantbuurt’s expansion in 2005. It is these two squares which will be the focus of our attention in the following section.

The Smaragdplein is a square of considerable size which serves as a meeting point for children and teens from the neighborhood aged between roughly eight to twenty years old. A playground in the middle where one can play football makes it an attractive site. It is a vibrant spot inaccessible to cars and passers-by merely consist of pedestrians and cyclists. As we have mentioned before, camera surveillance was introduced in the periods of 2007-2008 and has been consistently in use from 2011 onwards. They are easy to spot and their presence is rather prominent, casting a shadow over the playground. They make the persons present feel very aware of their visibility. Consequently a disciplinary mechanism is set in motion: one tones down one’s behaviour and makes sure he or she does not attract too much attention. Just based on our observations we cannot conclude that the children and teens necessarily suppress any outgoing behaviour. However, we did that notice that when a patrolling police officer passed by on his bike the small crowd of children present were immediately silenced. Even though they were not involved in any illegal or even obnoxious activities, they felt the need to retreat and make themselves invisible during the officer’s passing. We can therefore conclude that the famous notion of the “panoptical regime” by Michel Foucault seems highly applicable to this square. Monitoring and observing thus leads to regulation and disciplining one’s behaviour. A question arising is whether these kids have come to internalize this behaviour of making themselves ‘invisible’ due to the structural circumstances they are in and what the consequences are in the long run. This however, is material for further research.

Another pressing force which artificially regulates the situation are the street coaches. Reports run by the municipality show a low level of effectiveness (see previous blog post on policies) due to insecure attitudes. However, our small-scaled ‘fieldwork’ revealed the opposite. As we were observing on the edge of the Smaragdplein, we noticed a group of five young men dressed in the typical red ‘uniform’ indicating

Picture by: Stichting Aanpak Overlast Amsterdam

they were street coaches. We approached them and asked if we could ask them a few questions.
        The street coaches emphasized that their role in the neighbourhood is a crucial one since there are still some people who often make trouble. Those street coaches go to their ‘hotspots’, which are the places where most tensioned interaction and crime takes place. They discover those places themselves by walking around, talking to the people and observing what is going on. Those hotspots are not always fixed, since the ‘criminals’ know where they are watched most. For example, the Smaragdplein was always a place where there was trouble between boys, but since there is a lot of policemen walking around and security cameras they moved to other places. 
      According to the street coaches the troublemakers are often men between the ages of twenty to thirty. Especially when the weather is nice, those guys come out of their houses and tensions rise easily. Contrary to this generation, the younger boys that play soccer with each other are very different they say; they do not

Cameras in the Diamantbuurt

make trouble. The fact that the street coaches make a profile of almost every kid they see in the streets, those kids can feel the social control. Social control is one of the main preventions of crime; it is a mechanism ‘used to regulate the conduct of people who are seen as deviant, criminal, worrying or troublesome in some way by others’, as Martin Innes, professor in the school of social sciences explains in his book Understanding Social Control: Crime and Social Order in Late Modernity (2003). The need for social control comes from the fear of crime. The creation of more social control in the Diamantbuurt by placing more security was a reaction on the fear that was partly created by the ‘Bert and Marja affair’. Nowadays, the Diamantbuurt seems a peaceful area where people make good use of the environment and enjoy it.

Literature

Gehl, J.
2011 Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space. Washington: Island Press.

Innes, M.
2003 Understanding Social Control: Crime and Social Order in Late Modernity. Glasgow: Bell & Bain.