Red Light District

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema will investigate whether the prostitution sector can be moved out of the Red Light District and located in other parts of the city, including neighborhoods where more workplaces can be found. A prostitution hotel outside the Red Light District is one of the options she is looking into, she said in a city council debate on Thursday, Het Parool reports. 

A campaign was launched in Amsterdam aimed at drawing attention to the recognition of sex work. The message of the campaign is "sex work = work". Sex workers want people to understand that they are doing normal and legitimate work, NOS reports.

The two week long camping consists of electronic posters at bus- and tram stops. The posters will be shown for ten seconds every minute in different places in the city center. In both English and Dutch, the posters read: "My body. My job. My choice."

After nine years in operation, the Amsterdam Underground tour - started by the De Regenboog Groep, an NGO that works with homeless people - will now be in the hands of the formerly homeless guides who have lived the experiences the tour aims to illuminate to tourists. De Regenboog made the decision to form a cooperative for the four current volunteers to own the business and have full control of their narratives.

Mayor Femke Halsema of Amsterdam is currently exploring various options for a new prostitution policy in the Red Light District. One of the options she is considering is closing all the window brothels in the area, NU.nl reports.

According to the mayor, the situation in the center of Amsterdam increasingly "dire" due to the continuing suspicions of human trafficking and the growth of unlicensed prostitution. "It forces us to put the prostitution policy on the agenda again", she said in a letter to the city council on Wednesday.

A novel new attraction will soon be opening in Amsterdam. Multi-sensory adult cinema 5D Porn is opening its doors in the Red Light District. A world first, according to owner Nathalie.

Mayor Jim Fouts of the American city of Warren is facing criticism about statements he made about a trip to Amsterdam. Speaking about the Dutch capital's Red Light District to an employee 2013, he apparently boasts that "you could get a 16-year-old girl if you wanted to". 

Amsterdam coalition parties GroenLinks, D66 and SP want to move prostitution out of the Red Light District by issuing new prostitution permits for areas outside the city center. They hope that this will relieve some pressure on the busy city center, and make sex workers' lives easier and safer. But not all sex workers are pleased with his idea. 

The municipality of Amsterdam is preparing experiments with three boat-related measures to see if they can reduce inconvenience for residents and business owners in the crowded city center. The first is a pleasure boat ban on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal in the afternoon and evening, AT5 reports.

Amsterdam is implementing cleaning breaks in the Red Light District during busy nights. Parts of the street will be temporarily be closed to the public, so that the mess left by visitors can be cleaned up. This is one of the measures new mayor Femke Halsema is taking to quickly solve problems in the overcrowded Amsterdam city center, following damning reports by the city's ombudsman, Het Parool reports.

Mayor Femke Halsema of Amsterdam is making an "ultimate attempt" to convince the lower house of Dutch parliament to hire more police officers. She is discussing this matter with Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus of Justice and Security, the Telegraaf reports.

Halsema toured Amsterdam's Red Light District during the early hours of Saturday morning, according to the newspaper. She denies that there is complete "lawlessness", as Amsterdam's ombudsman Arre Zuurmond said in previous reports. "But it is true that there are far too few enforcers and officers."

The municipality of Amsterdam's ambitious project to clean up the city center only partially succeeded, the Amsterdam Metropolitan's Court of Auditors said in a report about the project. The Red Light District is still marred by crime and human trafficking, according to the court, NOS reports.

Project 1012, named after the postcode of the old Amsterdam city center, launched almost ten years ago under the initiative of then alderman Lodewijk Asscher. The intention was to breathe new life into the city center.