In the past 10 days, I started the research on my book, and already something interesting is coming out. I knew that I wanted to focus on the Provo movement in the 60's, the Squatter movement and the Nieuwmarktrellen - the riots against the building Metro in 1975. Now I am beginning to see how these events are linked.It helped to get some DVD's of times even before this period. Currently I am watching Beeld Van Nederland (Pictures from Holland) starting from 1958. This way I try to understand what was happening in Holland before the period I want to write about and to see what changed. Things seemed so peaceful in the 50's and early 60's - what triggered the people to get on the streets and protest?
Interesting points are how things changed in the early 60's. Car traffic in Holland went from 0.5 million cars to 1 million in just 5 years. The air traffic at Schiphol airport also doubled in a 5-year period. The population of Holland grew from 10 million in 1950 to over 14 million in 1980, however an odd trend came in Amsterdam. The population in the city dropped from 850,000 in 1960 to 700,000 in 1980, and the increase came in the suburbs - from 300,000 growing to 800,000 during that time.
All of these changes put a sudden pressure on the city. It needed new houses because of population growth, but there was nowhere to build in the centre. So suburban areas like the Bijlmer in the south-east of the city were planned and huge numbers of homes were built. But transport to the city was not good, and the idea of the Metro through the centre was formed.The ironic issue that caused such uproar was that, to build the Metro, they had to knock a lot of houses down - especially in the historic Buurt (neighbourhood) of Nieuwmarkt and its surroundings. That reduction of housing was dramatic and the reason why the central city population dropped when the overall population of Holland was booming. This is the core of the story of Amsterdam in the 60's through to the early 80's.
There is huge detail behind this - I haven't even begin to touch on the Politics behind the story. But yesterday I saw more footage of the Opruiming (clear out) of the houses before demolition in 1975, when many house owners and Kraakers (squatters) refused to leave their houses. Watching film of water cannons, riot police and incredible violence on the streets of Amsterdam is so hard to reconcile with the atmosphere in the city now.
So now I start to interview people who were living in the city at that time, to get under the skin of what happened and why. So far I have some of the What, but with no Why, there is no story.
The real story is still a lot of research away from me. But I am hooked already.
