MIXING OLD AND NEW

Changes roll into Amsterdam.

T

his year we decided to take our summer vacation in Amsterdam. For my family, Amsterdam is not just any destination. I lived in the city for seven years and wrote a book about it. My partner, Pamela, lived there for 23 years. We met in Amsterdam. Our son was born in the city. We have friends, family, colleagues, memories and roots there. It is, logically and in our hearts, our second home. And yet, three years after returning to the United States, we realized that Amsterdam had become shockingly remote in our lives. So while the trip would be a vacation, the real motive was to spend a couple of weeks reclaiming the city.

We had been hearing and reading that it had changed dramatically in the short time since we had moved, thanks to a number of forces. The population is growing, the city has plans to build 50,000 homes over the next 10 years, and the largest group of newcomers (both Dutch and immigrants from places like Turkey and Morocco) are those between the ages of 20 and 34, who are putting down roots and reshaping the urban landscape.

At the same time, real estate prices are spiking. That’s partly because housing costs in top-tier European cities like London and Paris have moved into the stratosphere while the Netherlands is one of the few places where it is possible to obtain a mortgage with no money down.

Meanwhile, a few years ago Amsterdam ramped up permits for new hotels, which began coming online at the same time the Airbnb phenomenon hit. To all of that you have to factor in the ineffable: that global hipsterism came to the conclusion that Amsterdam — with its orderly northern languor, its human scale, its society built around coffee and beer — was a place of relevance.

On our arrival, however, it seemed that nothing had changed. Taking the train from the airport and stepping out of Central Station, you encounter the familiar detritus, the same ragged rumble of buses and traffic and ugly shops and wayward tourists heading up the streets called Damrak and Rokin toward the city center. Also unchanged, thankfully, is the canal zone, the heart and soul of Amsterdam. Here, where

Houses line the canals of Amsterdam’s city center. Amsterdam is growing and going through dramatic changes as large numbers of young people, both native-born and immigrant, put down roots there.