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A range of resources looking at Mill Road. Also has a link to an email subscription where you can get up to date information on events being held.

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Since our memorial event to celebrate Allan's life in March 2021, the committee of the Mill Road History Society have been thinking about and receiving ideas for a more lasting public statement of our affection for him. We want to honour Allan in a way which acknowledges his very significant role in the community, with his various hats on, and we have also received some generous donations to help us do something.

We have been liaising closely with Janice Western, Allan's widow, and can tell you about a couple of projects now.

Allan's Broom

In 2021 the MRHS Committee was approached by Clare Phillips, Curator of 'Resonance-Cambridge' the Public Art programme for the Cambridge Investment Partnerships (CIP) programme of new housing.

CIP is building the housing development called Ironworks on the former site of the City Council Depot where Allan worked. Clare spoke to us about a memorial piece, supported by investment into the community engagement programme at Ironworks.

Together with Janice, we came up with the idea of creating a metal version of Allan's famous City Council broom, to be fixed propped up against a wall in a public area on the development. We wanted to commemorate the way Allan frequently leant his broom against a wall while he talked to people who passed by! Caro Wilson was keen to explore whether Mackays on East Road would be able to make it, and, with Janice, they took the original broom to the shop to see what could be done. To cut a long story short, the Mackays team were excited by the idea, and delighted to be involved. Tas Claydon volunteered to design and manufacture a copper-finished metal version, and he and his colleague Scott Bailey have created a brilliant artwork which will be fixed in a public space, up against a wall.

A plaque on the wall will have the following wording:

In memory of Allan Brigham, 1951-2020
Road sweeper for Cambridge City Council, trade unionist, historian, tour guide and community enthusiast.
Allan loved Mill Road and Mill Road loved him.
Broom designed and made by Scott Bailey and Tas Claydon of Mackays, Cambridge
Concept: Mill Road History Society

This is a really nice example of local organisations working together and we are extremely grateful to Cambridge Investment Partnership for supporting the project.

Allan's Bench

We would also like to place a memorial bench in a public area, and, again with Janice, we think the best position is the summit of Mill Road Bridge next to the bench dedicated to Suzy Oakes. Suzy's bench is well used and there is room for another alongside it. This seems to be a good place for several reasons: Allan and Suzy worked closely together over many pan Mill Road projects including, before she died, the early stages of the Mill Road History project. Like Suzy, Allan believed the bridge should be seen as uniting Romsey and Petersfield rather than dividing them. And, importantly, the site overlooks the Depot site where he worked, Mill Road which he loved and the Railway which featured heavily in most of his tours. If you went on one you will remember that question, aimed directly at one of his punters, perhaps even you, to make sure we were all concentrating: 'When did the Railway come to Cambridge?' We are delighted that City Councillor Richard Robertson has emailed us to say: I'm sure that Allan would very much approve of the idea of a second bench next to Suzy's. Like her, he saw Mill Road as one community and this proposal will help endorse that.

Whilst this is still very much in the planning stage, we are pleased to say that officers at the City Council have confirmed that they are happy to work with us to achieve this.

The heading for this post acknowledges the title of Allan's last book, A Brush with the Past, Cambridge local history, edited by Becky Proctor, 2020. This is available at the Museum of Cambridge, the CUP bookshop, David's and the bookstalls on the market. Waterstones also have copies (apparently in the UK travel section!) and it's still available to order on line at - https://hannahbrigham.wixsite.com/allanbrigham

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Since our memorial event to celebrate Allan's life in March 2021, the committee of the Mill Road History Society have been thinking about and receiving ideas for a more lasting public statement of our affection for him.

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It is 3.30pm on a Friday and 28-year-old German Lisa Wulff is in a half-hour queue for bubble tea and "toasts" at Amsterdam's Chun cafe.

"I've seen it on social media, and it looks good," she says. "My generation is more on Instagram, but I have a younger sister, so I saw it on TikTok."

She is one of 23 million overnight tourists expected this year in Amsterdam and is looking to eat in the city's famous De 9 Straatjes - "nine little streets". One brick road down, the queue for posh chip shop and fellow social media sensation Fabel Friet stretches across a bridge.

They are symptoms of a certain kind of tourism, inspired more by social media than classic attractions or guidebooks, also seen in Italy and Spain, but very evident in this small, heavily visited country.

While the number of tourists appears to be back at peak 2019 levels, Amsterdammers complain that many appear more inspired by Instagrammable food, lazy bike rides and "window shopping" in the red light district than by the city's top hotels, museums and galleries.

Some are particularly concerned about social media-influenced flash crowds in places used to a meandering stream. Outside Fabel Friet, a notice asks customers "kindly to respect our neighbours by not eating your fries in front of their houses" while Brenned Tieman on security duty asks tourists to move to the canal to eat their fries with "war" sauce (mayo, satay and onions).

Although Fabel Friet started promoting itself during the pandemic with viral TikTok clips handcutting chips or magically forming them into the shop's name, co-founder Floris Feilzer would prefer a Michelin star to social media fame.

"We are done with the TikTok label," he says. "If you don't have the quality, it won't come to anything. It's about having great products, and a heart for the business and for the neighbourhood. A lot of residents come here for chips."

At Chun cafe, owners Melissa Cheung and Kelvin Chan see things slightly differently: they feel social media - they use Instagram - gives small businesses a democratic and inclusive channel for promotion. "While we don't actively post on TikTok, we've been thrilled to see the spontaneous buzz generated by individuals who share their experiences," the couple said.

Chip shots: latest Amsterdam social media trend. Photograph: Judith Jockel/The Observer

But despite the efforts of both businesses to be good neighbours, around the corner on the Keizersgracht - the most expensive street in the Netherlands - some are unhappy. Multiple signs in windows and on stairs read: "No picnic: please do not sit here."

A local business owner, who asked not to be named, believes takeaways belong in the red light district. "This is a beautiful place, and now it's full of eating people," she says. "It's not that I don't want them to have success, but look at it for us: my clients stay away."

Lony Scharenborg, manager of the De 9 Straatjes shopping area, hopes the trend for performative tourism - copying influencer content - is temporary. "It's the general public that decides things on TikTok," she says. "It was all about takeaways - something you don't expect in the Canal Ring or next to chic hotels. A lot of young people come for chips or a biscuit, which is good for diversity and inclusivity, but if it becomes dominant, other shops will go away."

In the densely populated, tourist-heavy Netherlands, social media trends are evident. After enduring Instagram-happy visitors trampling the bulb crop, the Dutch tourist board this year imagined a "human-proof" tulip for its April fools' campaign.

"We're all aware that certain places can suffer from overtourism. We've been looking to spread that tourism," says Simone Sagi of the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, which uses social media to promote diverse destinations and "slow Sundays".

Amsterdam city council points out "it is a worldwide trend that because of social media, certain places and products are visited more for visitors to film or photograph themselves and share" and says it is ensuring businesses reduce nuisance and "keeping a close eye on developments".

A national law may give councils more power to control soaring numbers of fast food outlets. "And," adds Scharenborg, "of course it's never nice to eat on the street."

According to Dr Joris Demmers, associate professor and head of the marketing department at Amsterdam University's business school, flash crowds are not good for businesses.

"This is a relatively recent phenomenon so there's not too much scientific literature, but a few case studies show that for neighbourhoods, destinations and also business owners, it's very difficult to manage this in a good way," he says.

"It's like a plague of locusts: people come, they overwhelm a place, you have capacity problems, you start to think about hiring more people, but a week later they've all gone. It's hard to get a sustainable source of income." He adds that although social media may feel more "authentic", it fosters a monoculture since algorithms promote what was successful in the past.

"There are so many good things outside the centre," says Erik Schmit, tourism spokesman for D66 liberal democrats in Amsterdam, which successfully proposed closing a cruise ship terminal by the central station. "My tip: Amsterdam has unique shops, so look in other neighbourhoods." And for the best tips, adds Demmers: "Talk to the locals."

Back in the queue for what Fabel Friet aims to make "the tastiest chips in Amsterdam", this is what British tourists Olive Kennington and George Heading have done, asking the owner of their boat trip where to eat. "You can trust them a bit more," says Heading. "It's less of a tourist trap."

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TikTok food tourists leave a bitter taste in Amsterdam

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Shop owners and residents are not taking kindly to 'flash crowds' who come to pose and eat fast food in the city's quaint tangle of streets such as De 9 Straatjes

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ities are now home to more than half of the global population, a share that will rise to two-thirds by 2050. That means the forces shaping life in cities now also shape our world as a whole. Cities throughout history have been the great incubators of human progress, through their power to bring us closer together - something we need now more than ever. Many of the answers to our greatest challenges are to be found in reforming our cities, but if we fail to take action, cities will magnify the perils that lie ahead.

The populist politics of recent years has been tinged with resentment against global metropolises such as London and New York. These cities have boomed while others have struggled. But while the gulf between thriving cities and everywhere else has widened, so too has the disparity within these cities. Inequality has risen in most metropolitan areas in the US since 1980, but it has risen fastest in large, thriving cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago, where it is now much higher than the national average. Wages for high-skilled knowledge workers in these places have soared, but pay for the low-skilled service workers supporting them has languished, a gulf that is compounded by the rapidly rising cost of living in these cities.

These global metropolises have increasingly come to resemble ivory towers, with a highly concentrated core of prosperity served by a sprawling periphery of disadvantage. Urban centres have seen increasing employment, falling crime and significant improvements in the performance of public services. Warehouses and factories from Kings Cross in London to Brooklyn in New York have been converted into upmarket apartments for well-educated (and typically white) professionals. Former working-class housing has been renovated or redeveloped. Trendy cafes and bars have appeared, along with high-end fitness studios and organic food stores.

Formerly affordable, working-class areas have seen significant gentrification. To be clear, the growth in the population size of inner cities has been modest compared to suburbanisation. In fact, a new ring of sprawl dubbed the "exurb" has emerged. What has changed is the socioeconomic makeup of the concentric circles of cities. Whereas once the well-off fled for suburbia, today in many cities they are heading back to the urban core, while poverty is increasingly moving out to the suburbs. The journalist Alan Ehrenhalt has aptly described this process as "the great inversion".

The increased attractiveness of many urban centres can be seen in the shifting profile of house prices within the concentric circles of cities. One study of the top 20 cities in the US over time found a major shift in recent decades in the relationship between house prices and distance from the city centre: while in 1980 house prices increased the further away a property was from the central business district, by 2010, that relationship had inverted. The premium on housing in urban centres has further increased since then: median home prices in the five inner boroughs of New York City increased at four times the rate of the rest of the metropolitan area between the start of 2010 and the start of 2020. The faster growth of suburban house prices during the pandemic has already tapered off, leaving the long-term picture largely unchanged.

What has led highly paid professionals to swap a freestanding house and garden in the suburbs for high-density living in urban centres?

Multiple factors have been at work. The reduction in urban pollution in rich countries in the latter decades of the 20th century, thanks to increasing regulation and the decline of dirty industries, is one reason. The River Thames, which runs through the heart of London, was long a source of revulsion for the city's residents. In 1858, industrial, human and animal waste combined with hot weather to produce such a horrible smell that it was named "the Great Stink". Despite subsequent efforts to improve the condition of the Thames, it remained abhorrently polluted, to the extent that it was declared "biologically dead" by the Natural History Museum in 1957. Thanks, however, to a multi-decade programme of cleaning and treatment, the river has made an impressive recovery.

Cities such as Chicago have experienced a similar reversal. The removal of lead from fuel and other environmental regulations have contributed to significant improvements in air quality in cities in rich countries, though there is still much to do. Air quality in London has come a long way since the great smog of 1952, which claimed thousands of lives.

A fundamental reconfiguration in lifestyle preferences has also been under way in recent decades, contributing to the growing desirability of living in urban centres. From the 1960s onwards, urban centres became especially attractive for those whose lives fell outside the conventional social mores. The LGBTQ+ community embraced the inner city as a place where they could escape the judgment of middle-class suburbanites. Amid rising immigration in the latter half of the 20th century, inner cities brought ethnic minorities together into diaspora communities, in contrast to the overwhelmingly white suburbs. As a result, inner cities developed a spirit of tolerance and openness that has been conspicuously absent from suburbia.

For an emerging educated elite that blended the aesthetic of the counterculture with the economic advantages bestowed on them by the transition to a knowledge economy, the mark of success is not a double-garage home in the suburbs, but a home in an inner-city neighbourhood surrounded by creativity, culture and convenience. Indeed, the lifecycle of gentrification in recent decades has tended to follow a predictable pattern: first come the artists, then the real estate developers and then the professionals. This same story has played out everywhere from London's Shoreditch to New York's SoHo to Sydney's Surry Hills.

The process of gentrification is not exactly new. In recent decades, however, the process has accelerated and extended into many neighbourhoods that once provided affordable homes to those on lower incomes, leaving large parts of the city out of their reach. We cannot let our cities descend into islands of privilege amid seas of disadvantage. Thankfully, with the right policies and investments, a better, more inclusive and sustainable future is possible.

he growing demand for inner-city living has coincided with the arrival of the millennial generation into adulthood. Urban centres have a magnetic pull for those just setting out on their careers, curious about the world and hungry for experiences. This is the time in a person's life when they may have achieved financial independence - or something close to it - but are not yet constrained by the need for a larger space to accommodate a family. Unbounded by such constraints, these individuals head to the city and all the excitement it has to offer.

The role of inner cities as marriage markets reinforces this. Even in an age of meeting online, very few couples choose to conduct their relationships entirely in the virtual realm, at least after the first few encounters. And the further one gets from busy urban centres, the lower the likelihood of finding a good match. As singles couple up and start a family, the pressure for more space increases, while time available for enjoying big-city life shrinks. The result is an exodus from cities for parents with young children.

We can see this lifecycle pattern clearly in the net migration flows in and out of the inner boroughs of London. While many teenagers leave the city after graduating from school to attend university, they return after their degrees are completed, and bring with them many more young adults from across the country. As a result, net migration into inner London flips from negative to positive for adults in their early 20s, and continues rising into the mid-20s. After that, it begins to taper off and eventually turns negative again as many adults have children and leave for the outer suburbs and commuter towns.

Over the past two decades, however, that story has evolved in two important ways. First, the amount of net migration into inner London by adults in their mid-20s has nearly tripled. Second, the age at which net migration flips direction - with more adults exiting than entering - has shifted by a full decade, from 34 to 44. The reason for this lies in changing demography. The average age of marriage has increased significantly in the past few decades. When Prince Charles and Lady Diana married in 1981, the average age of first marriage in the UK for women was 22 and for men 24; when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle married in 2018, these figures had risen to 30 and 32 respectively. Over the same time period, the average age of women at childbirth in the UK has risen from 27 to 31. As young people couple up and start families later, if at all, the pull of the urban lifestyle remains for longer. And while increasingly unaffordable housing in cities such as London is now pushing out a growing number of young people, many would rather stay.

The great inversion has taken an immense toll on many of society's most disadvantaged. As wealthy urbanites move in, the existing poor residents are pushed away. For those who happen to own their properties in gentrifying neighbourhoods, this process can create a windfall financial gain. Unfortunately, the most disadvantaged in these areas tend to be renters, who find themselves confronted with rapidly rising housing costs. While the effects of gentrification may be more muted in cases where the neighbourhood in question was once made up primarily of industrial and commercial real estate, the stock of such property has rapidly been exhausted in New York, Chicago and London. The result is a combination of increasingly concentrated disadvantage in a small number of inner-city neighbourhoods - such as the Bronx in New York or Englewood in Chicago - and a general outward movement of poorer people into the suburbs.

Often, those who are pushed out by gentrification end up far out in the exurbs, where property is cheap but jobs are sparse and commute times to the urban centre are oppressive, especially for those who cannot afford a car and rely on public transport. Sheila James, a public health worker, told the New York Times that property prices in San Francisco had forced her so far out of the city that she faced a 2.15am start on a normal working day. Between 2000 and 2015, the share of neighbourhoods in exurban areas with a poverty rate above 20% more than doubled in the US. And while commute times in the US have been rising across the board, they have been rising far more rapidly for Black and Hispanic workers. Whereas the truly disadvantaged were previously those trapped in poor, inner-city neighbourhoods, they are increasingly those trapped in low-density areas on the periphery of cities.

The takeover of inner-city areas by educated professionals has come at a great price, but it is unclear whether the alternative is any more appealing. The ability of cities to attract high-skill knowledge workers is essential for their success in today's economy. And these workers now want to live in trendy urban centres into their late 30s and beyond. The fact that gentrification has been slower or absent in struggling cities such as Detroit and Cleveland is not a coincidence.

hat should be done about this? Making today's cities work for all their inhabitants, not just a lucky minority, will require three pillars: fairer housing, fairer public transport and fairer schooling. To start with schooling, it is again instructive to look at rich countries that have succeeded in achieving relatively equal outcomes for students irrespective of their socioeconomic background. Japan's schooling system is perhaps best known for the demanding pressures it places on pupils, but it is also one of the most egalitarian systems in the world.

The approach to education in Japan offers a number of useful lessons. The first is to decouple the financing of schools from local revenue streams. In the US, nearly half of school funding comes from local government revenues, which vary heavily depending on the affluence of an area. By contrast, in Japan funding for teacher salaries, school buildings and other expenses primarily comes from national and prefectural governments. The fact that very few primary and lower secondary school students attend private schools in Japan also means that everybody participates in the same education system during these pivotal years.

The second lesson from Japan is to move away from the direct hiring of teachers by schools. Teachers in Japan are hired by prefectures - analogous to states - and typically rotate through multiple schools over the course of their career, especially early on. This allows the government to direct high-performing teachers to disadvantaged areas, rather than teacher quality acting as a mechanism for further widening the socioeconomic gap in school performance.

Many other ideas exist for reducing educational inequality - some easier, others harder. Research by Roland Fryer of Harvard has demonstrated that simply providing increased training for public school principals can have a meaningful impact on student achievement. In Britain, the teachers' union has advocated for a certain number of places in high-performing schools to be ringfenced for disadvantaged students from outside the catchment area. A similar concept exists in the US in the shape of "magnet schools", which focus on drawing together gifted students irrespective of background, though the impact on the disadvantaged students who are not fortunate enough to make the cutoff is unclear. Perhaps the most powerful mechanism for reducing disparities in educational outcomes within cities is to tackle the challenge of affordable housing, which prevents poorer families from accessing better schools in wealthier neighbourhoods.

n the early decades of the 20th century, as public concern continued to grow over the quality of life for the working poor in overcrowded and ramshackle inner-city housing, many rich countries began major efforts to clear such areas and replace them with social housing, a process that accelerated in the aftermath of the second world war. Britain was a particularly enthusiastic adopter, building more than 4m social houses between the end of the war and the start of the 1980s. Such initiatives were not without their critics. For example, in the 60s the urbanist Jane Jacobs argued forcefully against the prevailing approach in New York City of bulldozing slums and replacing them with lifeless, poorly designed housing projects that undermined local communities.

But social housing has played an important role in reducing inequality in cities by ensuring that all residents can have their basic need for shelter met. When interspersed through a city, it has also helped to combat the tendency towards socioeconomic segregation.

In London, for example, social housing was also incorporated into wealthy areas such as Chelsea or Primrose Hill in postwar decades, with the notable benefit of disadvantaged families gaining access to the same schools and local services as their wealthy neighbours. In the 80s, amid the free-market fundamentalism championed by Thatcher and Reagan, social housing fell out of favour in many countries. In Britain, Thatcher's right to buy policy led to millions of properties being sold to tenants, crippling the state's capacity in the following years to house people in need.

Economists began to advocate a more market-friendly model of providing direct financial support in the form of housing vouchers for poor families. As a result, socioeconomic segregation increased in many cities, as low-income households consolidated around low-income areas where rent is cheap. In recent years, Britain has sought to remedy this issue by requiring new residential developments above a certain size to incorporate a number of housing units that are rented out below market rates. Even including these homes, however, the combined supply of social and discounted housing in Britain has been in steady decline since the 1980s.

Cities such as Vienna illustrate the alternative. More than 60% of the inhabitants of the city live in subsidised rental housing - compared to around 20% in London and just over 5% in New York - roughly half of which is owned by the municipal government and the other half by subsidised non-profit cooperatives. A relatively liberal upper limit on the household income that qualifies for subsidised housing in Vienna - €53,340 (£46,125) for a single person or €79,490 (£68,738) for a couple - means these housing blocks bring together people across a relatively broad swathe of the socioeconomic spectrum.

The rapid increase in house prices in many major cities has made home ownership - and the wealth creation it brings - increasingly unattainable for many. House prices in London, Paris, New York and Sydney have grown much faster than median incomes in recent decades, making it hard to accumulate the savings needed to transition from renting to owning.

There are two main culprits behind the decline in housing affordability. The first is years of low interest rates, which until very recently made debt unusually cheap. That made it possible for those who already had the initial capital for a deposit to pay more for a home, either for themselves or as a rental investment, pushing up prices and making it harder for those without a deposit to get on the property ladder. The recent surge in interest rates has not helped, as the cost of home loans has risen by more than house prices have fallen. The second is the long-term deceleration in the building of new houses. Adjusting for population size, rich countries are now building fewer than half as many houses as they did in 1970. The problem is particularly acute in inner cities, many of which have seen very little growth in the housing supply in recent decades, with construction activity skewed towards refreshing the existing stock. Between 2010 and 2019, total housing units in New York City's five boroughs increased by just 6%, compared with job growth of 21%.

Cities need to stop growing outwards and start increasing density. This need not imply endless high-rise buildings and the destruction of heritage architecture - much could be achieved through greater use of mid-rise development and faster conversion of former offices and industrial spaces. As populations in rich countries age and as young people live alone for longer, accelerating the conversion of family homes into single units can also help.

he final pillar for fairer cities is fairer public transport. Access to cheap transportation has long been essential in giving the disadvantaged inhabitants of cities the means to access gainful employment. Yet the systems of public transport that exist in many major cities were often designed and built more than a century ago, at a time when the geography of poverty was very different. As inner-city areas become gentrified and poverty shifts outwards, the risk is that transit systems in many cities end up subsidising the population that least needs it. For instance, in London, the cost of a monthly travel pass is highest for those who need to commute from outer zones into the inner city, yet these areas are exactly where poverty is growing the fastest.

Questions also need to be answered around the financing of public transport. In London, tickets fund more than 70% of public transport income, twice the share in Paris. A monthly travel pass in London for zones 1 to 3 - which loosely corresponds to the inner boroughs - at the time of writing costs £184 (or €211). That compares to just €84 (£73) in Paris for an all-zones metro system pass that covers a similar distance.

Transit systems like London's, which rely on ticket revenue more than general taxation, place a greater financial burden on the poorest inhabitants of the city and increase the risk of them being trapped inside struggling neighbourhoods. Still, for all its flaws, the London system is far superior to car-centric cities in the US such as Los Angeles or Atlanta, where a distinct lack of public transit options acts as a poverty trap for any resident unable to afford a car.

Three years on from the pandemic-induced surge in remote working, a clearer picture is emerging of its impact on cities. Dire predictions of a widespread abandonment of inner-city neighbourhoods have not come true, with residents valuing more than just their commute time. Still, the drop in commuting into central business districts is taking a heavy toll, with offices left vacant, public transport systems left underutilised, and the ecosystem of businesses from retailers to restaurants that service commuters left struggling. The deteriorating state of downtown San Francisco, already burdened by a long-running homelessness problem exacerbated by wildly unaffordable housing, highlights the risks. Now is the time for bold action, based on fresh vision.

Cities are the source of dynamism in all societies. For 5,000 years they have been our engines of progress, spurring the cooperation, specialisation and creativity that have been the driving forces for human development. Today, more people live in them than at any time in history. It is imperative that we learn how to make cities sustainable, and ensure they work for all, not just a fortunate few.

This is an edited extract from Age of the City: Why Our Future Will Be Won or Lost Together by Ian Goldin and Tom Lee-Devlin, published by Bloomsbury and available at guardianbookshop.com.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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How to reduce the damage done by gentrification

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The long read : We cannot let our cities descend into islands of privilege amid seas of disadvantage. With the right policies and investments, a better future is possible

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/dariosabaghi/2022/12/12/amsterdam-wants-foreign-tourists-to-stay-away-from-drugs-alcohol-and-sex/?sh=1169ab5982ef

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Amsterdam's City Council is planning to launch a campaign to discourage foreign tourists from access to activities related to alcohol, drugs, and sex, and it is implementing a comprehensive package of measures to fight back 'nuisance' tourism.

Amsterdam's deputy mayor Sofyan Mbarki is embarking on a "discouraging campaign" to curb tourism nuisance by limiting several popular activities in the Dutch capital.

The proposed plan will affect millions of tourists that every year enter cannabis coffee shops, visit the Red Light District, and enjoy the pubs and bars.

Mbaki introduced a package of measures in late November that aim to clean up Amsterdam's "reputation," as many tourists associate the Dutch capital with drugs and alcohol and the Red Light District, which attracts "voyeuristic tourism."

The move is part of a wider plan to "clean up" tourism in Amsterdam by curbing those activities related to alcohol, drugs, and sex, and city councilors are concerned that such activities are attracting a kind of tourism perceived as unwelcome in the city by residents.

"The discouragement campaign aims to keep out visitors we do not want. If we love the city, we must take action now," said Mbarki in a press statement.

"Action is needed to prevent nuisance and overcrowding. Amsterdam is a world city, and bustle and liveliness come along with this, but to keep our city liveable, we need to choose limits instead of irresponsible growth," he continued.

Mbarki has also said the city had consulted residents, local businesses, experts, and interest groups to take this decision and concluded that there is an urgent need to reduce the amount of low-grade tourism.

Therefore, Amsterdam plans to start a campaign next spring, in line with the vision to clean the city's image.

The "Stay Away" campaign will start in early 2023 through a dissuasion campaign targeting foreign visitors that go to Amsterdam only "for alcohol, drugs, and sex."

Among the proposed measures, Mbkai aims to limit river cruises, tighten opening hours for pubs, bars, and restaurants, and window prostitution in the Red Light District during weekend nights. Furthermore, he wants to tackle nuisance bachelor parties and ban pub crawls and smoking activities in certain parts of the city center.

Amsterdam is one of Europe's most visited capital cities, with over 21 million tourists per year, according to the City Council.

The tolerance policy on cannabis and other so-called "soft drugs" and the regulation on prostitution have created an attractive mix of leisure activities for many tourists over the years.

However, the council of Amsterdam now wants to limit such activities that bother residents, according to a report titled "Vision of visitors economy in Amsterdam 2035".

"Nuisance and 'overtourism' are signals that the limit has been reached and that the quality of life is in danger. Visitors remain welcome in our city, but this should no longer be at the expense of livability and accessibility for our residents," the report reads.

The report complains that the international image of Amsterdam has been stereotyped by coffee shops, sex theatres, and the windows in the Red Light District, leading many tourists to misunderstand the idea of freedom with a lack of morality.

As a result, "groups of visitors are under the impression that Amsterdam is a city where anything goes," the report reads.

"We want to get rid of this type of tourism, so we're also tackling the offer specifically aimed at these groups," the report continues.

In particular, cannabis coffee shops and foreign cannabis users have recently been the target of Amsterdam's mayor, Femke Halsema, who has proposed to ban tourists from buying cannabis products from coffee shops.

The Dutch capital has over 160 coffee shops that sell cannabis products to hundreds of thousands of tourists every day. More than half (92) are located in the city center and have become one of the main activities for many tourists that visit Amsterdam.

According to a survey conducted by the government and non-profit research agency I&O Research quoted in the report, for 16% of tourists interviewed, the main reason to visit Amsterdam was to enter a coffee shop. Furthermore, about half of the incoming tourists in Amsterdam visit a cannabis coffee shop or claim they will certainly do so.

Another report by the market research of Breuer&Itraval shows that more than half of the visits to coffee shops in the city are made by foreign visitors.

In order to build sustainable and socially responsible tourism in Amsterdam, the councilors also aim to limit groups of tourists of any kind from accessing the city center.

Furthermore, bars and clubs in the city center may have limited opening hours to operate and could be forced to close by 2 am.

Such restrictions may apply to window prostitution and brothels in the Red Light District.

The proposed regulations also plan to tighten rules on Airbnb and short-term lets and encourage owners to turn them into homes for residents, and a tax could also be applied to tourists when the city is overcrowded.

Some plans are underway to also close some of the city's cannabis coffee shops, while smoking and drinking alcohol may become restricted in certain parts of the city.

The package of measures and the plan to create a new kind of tourism in Amsterdam by 2035 will be submitted to the City Council for approval on December 21.

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Amsterdam Wants Foreign Tourists To 'Stay Away' From Drugs, Alcohol, And Sex

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Amsterdam's City Council is planning to launch a campaign to discourage foreign tourists from access to activities related to alcohol, drugs, and sex, and it is implementing a comprehensive package of measures to fight back 'nuisance' tourism. Amsterdam's deputy mayor Sofyan Mbarki is embarking on a "discouraging campaign" to curb tourism nuisance by limiting several popular activities in the Dutch capital.

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The danger of a single story - Video 18 mins

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The danger of a single story - Video 18 mins

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED Talk

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

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Levelling up: The seaside town debating what change is needed

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Levelling up: The seaside town debating what change is needed

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Levelling up: The seaside town debating what change is needed - BBC News

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Unless ministers rethink the detail of plans to reduce regional inequality and "level up" Britain, the scheme could fail whole communities, says a charity.

The Salvation Army says thousands of lives could be harmed if the plans do not embrace the needs of residents.

BBC News is following the fortunes of the levelling up agenda in the seaside town of Rhyl, which has the two poorest neighbourhoods in Wales.

Rhyl is one of dozens of British towns eligible for a share of the £4.8bn levelling up fund under the UK government's flagship policy to reduce regional inequality.

A separate, huge spending programme has already transformed Rhyl's seafront.

But some locals question how the money is being spent and ask who benefits from the changes.

"Things are looking really bright for Rhyl," says Jamie Groves, managing director of council-owned Denbighshire Leisure Ltd.

Behind him lies a vast expanse of sandy beach and a sparkling sea.

"Rhyl had decades of promises and master plans, decades of all these visions and not one person delivered them," says Mr Groves, who grew up locally.

A stroll on the prom reveals new bars, restaurants and hotels, plus the revamped Victorian Pavilion theatre where Welsh icon Tom Jones will perform in September.

More than £120m from Denbighshire County Council, the Welsh government and the EU has helped transform the ageing promenade which fell into disrepair when the tourists spurned "Sunny Rhyl" in favour of sangria on the Costa del Sol.

The vision is for high quality facilities and the jewel in the crown, the SC2 waterpark, is fully booked for the summer - but some locals feel priced out.

A few streets away, Peter Saunders watches three of his 12 children play in a paddling pool he inflated and plonked in a parking bay outside his house.

Like many residents who spoke to the BBC, he bemoans the loss of the free paddling pool that once stood on the site now occupied by SC2.

It costs £48 for two-and-a-half hours in the waterpark for a family of four, although there are sometimes concessions.

For Peter, who says the town has many large families like his, the waterpark "just costs too much money... It's not right really, not for the people of Rhyl."

"In an ideal world most visitor attractions would be cheaper," Mr Groves admits, but he adds: "We've got to strike a balance between affordability and viability."

"We actually think this presents really good value for money," he says, pointing out that the waterpark employs local people.

A world away

It would probably take one of the town's many seagulls less than a minute to fly from the Good News Mission to the seafront in search of chips to scavenge - but it feels a world away.

"People need to come three or four streets back and see where the poverty is," says Natasha Harper, an outreach worker based at the former church which helps about 100 families a week.

"We had one family who were sleeping on the floor for quite a while because they couldn't afford beds."

She wants the people making decisions about the town to visit "for 10 minutes... and maybe the money wouldn't be trying to make the front look pretty but actually put into where it's needed."

The difference of opinion over the waterpark highlights national tensions over how to transform the fortunes of some of our poorest communities.

The Salvation Army says coastal areas in particular are "in dire need" but its report, published on Wednesday, highlights a lack of consultation.

"We want to encourage the government to listen to the communities who need their help, look up from the spreadsheet and see what we are seeing on the ground," says Rebecca Keating, the charity's director of employment services.

Post-pandemic jobs

"The pandemic has been devastating for the area in general," says Suzi Taylor, an employment development co-ordinator with the Salvation Army in Rhyl.

"In an instant the tourism stopped. The jobs which people rely on were in one fell swoop gone."

The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the resort rose sharply.

This includes not just people who lost their jobs but also those whose earnings fell low enough to be eligible to claim.

Denver Jeff dislikes relying on hand-outs but looking for a job during successive lockdowns was tough.

The 64-year-old former labourer says it was "impossible for me because I didn't have internet, the libraries were shut so I couldn't use their tablets, the job centre was shut".

The Salvation Army helped him find a part-time job as a cleaner at a local supermarket.

Suzi says any attempt to level up Rhyl must start with better skills training for the many local people on short-term or zero-hour contracts.

A lot of local jobs "just don't give the financial security that people need to be able to move on and see there's more to life than benefits".

'A good place'

In a statement, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said levelling up would encompass "all areas of the country, with billions of pounds of investment to support and regenerate communities, including coastal areas".

Officials will take into account "productivity, unemployment  and skills" when identifying areas most in need of support, the spokesperson added.

Denbighshire County Council's leader, Hugh Evans, says he understands how locals have felt neglected in efforts to change the town: "but we had to start somewhere".

"The challenge is marrying up the level of investment to the benefit of the people in the more deprived areas."

He says money has been invested in improving schools and housing and hopes the levelling up funds will improve Rhyl's decaying town centre.

"The vision is quite clear: It's about a good place to live, a good place to visit and a good place to work."

Additional reporting by Michael Buchanan.

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Levelling up: The seaside town debating what change is needed

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Unless ministers rethink the detail of plans to reduce regional inequality and "level up" Britain, the scheme could fail whole communities, says a charity. The Salvation Army says thousands of lives could be harmed if the plans do not embrace the needs of residents.

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Evaluating regeneration Moss Side, Manchester

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Evaluating regeneration Moss Side, Manchester

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Climate change and Gentrification - Synoptic link

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Climate change and Gentrification - Synoptic link

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Age segregation and place - Social inequality in the UK

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Age segregation and place - Social inequality in the UK