[ad_1]
It is 11 a.m. on a weekday in late June in Amsterdam’s De Wallen district, and a clean-up operation is underway. Street sweeping machines are collecting trash that hints at a raucous khbrknews the night before: cigarette packs, spliff butts, and empty cannabis baggies litter the narrow alleyways. City workers armed with hoses and brushes scrub at graffiti, navigating past windows draped with red curtains where sex workers are starting their early shifts.
Given the huge number of daily visitors to what’s better known as the Red Light District—Amsterdam’s iconic area with a reputation for hedonism—it won’t be long before the street sweepers are back. “They come four times a day,” says René Boer, an architecture critic and long-khbrknews resident, who despite the daily chaos finds inspiration in the rough edges and diversity of this 800-year-old neighborhood.
“We all have a spontaneous, chaotic, subversive side that we also need to see reflected in our living environment,” he tells TIME.
But Boer fears a change is coming. This approximately one square kilometer (0.38 square mi.) stretch of narrow streets and picturesque canals has become the backdrop for a battle over Amsterdam’s soul.
Sex workers and sympathizers take part in a demonstration to protest plans to shutter the city’s historic red light district, to be…
[ad_2]
