Just for Starters: Commercial Gentrification by Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Amsterdam and Rotterdam Neighbourhoods

Abstract

Many large European cities are now displaying clear social, ethnic and spatial divisions. These different types of cleavages tend to overlap. Governments try to chase away this spectre of an increasingly divided city by embarking on various policies. These policies generally neglect the (potential) role of immigrant entrepreneurs in improving neighbourhoods. In this contribution, we have focused on the immigrant business start-ups in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Neighbourhoods with high shares of immigrants indeed turn out to show relatively higher rates of immigrant businesses than other neighbourhoods in these two cities. Immigrant entrepreneurs, may, therefore, strengthen the local economy of these neighbourhoods and offer not only specific goods and services but also jobs, nodes of information and role models. Urban policies should, hence, explicitly target their policies to this kind of immigrant-driven process of commercial gentrification by creating cheap commercial properties in these neighbourhoods.