| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 83234 | Applied Geography | 2014 | 8 Pages |
•We describe the emergence of urban entrepreneurial strategies.•We distinguish between soft and hard design approaches and the use of fictions.•We discuss strategies and effects in Amsterdam's red-light district.•Ongoing strategies have not proven to elevate the conditions of sex-workers.•In the longer run, homogenization of the area could also affect tourist potential.
Entrepreneurial strategies to urban development involve a combination of risk-taking, inventiveness, promotion, and profit motivation, mostly associated with the field of economics. This market rational, guided by public-private investments and city branding, could however result in (a) a collection of sanitized city spaces specifically designed for the upper classes with unfavourable activities pushed outward, and (b) a homogenization of different destinations, without sufficient attention for the space-specific characteristics. Specific entrepreneurial strategies and their consequences for socially marginalized groups and destination competitiveness are discussed in the case of the red-light district of Amsterdam.
