Feargus O’Sullivan shares some unsettling urban-planning news from the Netherlands:
Following a long period of trouble with the police and neighbors, the city recently evicted the Dimitrov family from Amsterdam’s Noord district and sent them to basic accommodation on Zeeburger Island, a predominantly ex-industrial port zone in the area where the city meets the Ijmeer Lake. Housed in converted shipping containers monitored by a heavy police presence, the idea behind the move is that the family will bother their neighbors less if they don’t have any neighbors to bother.
The plan is part of a controversial, long-threatened scheme to create far-flung, socially isolated communities for the “antisocial,” approvingly dubbed “scum villages” by rightist politician Geert Wilders, who suggested the best way to deal with disruptive citizens would be for the authorities to “put all the trash together.” … It’s a policy that has some previous form in the Netherlands, where in the 19th century officially designated problem families were resettled in what were then considered distant, sandy wastes near the German border.
The family, which is of Roma descent, is not pleased:
The eight members of the Gipsy family have compared their container homes, numbers 48a and 48b, to a concentration camp and accused Amsterdam council of “pure racism.” Francois Lonis, ex-partner of one of the Dimitrov daughters who still lives with the family, criticized [Amsterdam mayor Eberhard] van der Laan for commemorating the Holocaust while “discriminating” against Roma. “The mayor talks a lot about Auschwitz but sends us to this place. Where is my mother-in-law supposed to do the shopping?” Mr Lonis told Parool.
(Image: The family moving into the shipping-container house, taken from a Dutch news report seen here)
The Dish 