Jaap Draaisma
Lecturer
Metropolitan Issues
Why Amsterdammers feel less at home in the city: 'It can be different, like in New York'
'Feeling at home is established through everyday routines and experiences and takes time to build.' Photo Jakob van Vliet
Amsterdammers feel less at home in their city. Is this a logical consequence of the changing demographic composition, as experts suggest, or should the city search for an entirely different kind of sense of home?
For years, in the periodic Citizen Monitor, it was a statistic that was not particularly interesting: the sense of home among Amsterdammers. It was a completely stable figure: from 1999 to 2010, 82 percent of Amsterdammers surveyed by research agency O&S felt completely at home in the city. But in the study published this week, in which the question was asked again for the first time since 2010, that figure is 67 percent.
Anyone looking purely at the figures would call such a sharp decline striking, but those with a good understanding of the matter are not surprised at all. For the more Amsterdam becomes a city of coming and going, the fewer people feel at home there.
“It is a logical consequence of how the city has developed,” says human geographer Jaap Draaisma, affiliated with the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. “Amsterdam is a global city with a large influx and outflow of people. It simply takes time to become rooted in a city. But that flow of people also affects the character of the city and the sense of home for people who have lived here longer.”
The examples are well-known: opposite the expat who, after four years, still doesn't know a word of Dutch because everyone speaks English to him, stands the native Amsterdammer who complains that you are only served in English in shops or restaurants. One sees a cosmopolitan hub, the other no longer recognizes his familiar city.
Gone within five years
Until 2015, Amsterdam saw around thirty thousand newcomers annually; in recent years, this has risen to eighty to ninety thousand, about ten percent of the Amsterdam population. The majority of the newcomers have left again within five years; their place is taken by new city residents.
It is the first time since 2010 that O&S has gauged the sense of home among Amsterdammers. This involves quantitative research, in which people are only asked whether they feel 'certainly', 'a little', or 'not' at home in the city. “We did not ask what they understand by feeling at home or what would need to happen to strengthen that feeling,” explains O&S researcher Sara Rubingh. It therefore remains a matter of speculation, but the demographic composition seems to be the most obvious explanation.
Draaisma points to the high turnover of international students and expats. “International students generally leave once they have completed their bachelor's or master's degree. And most people who come here to work are also transients. Americans are usually gone again within five years, and people from India who stay in the Netherlands often move to places outside the city. And then there are also a great many Dutch people who leave the city when they have children.”
Sorting machine
According to Draaisma, Amsterdam functions as a ‘sorting machine’. Young people in particular are welcome in the city to study or work, but after a few years, only a limited number are able to continue living in Amsterdam. The rest are driven out of the city by the sky-high prices of owner-occupied and rental homes.
Draaisma: “'Sorteermachine' is a reference to former GroenLinks alderman Maarten van Poelgeest, who called Amsterdam an 'emancipation machine'. By that, he meant that people from all corners of the world could settle in Amsterdam to develop themselves, to obtain degrees, get a job, or start a business. But they also came to make urban life their own or to emancipate themselves, for example as LGBTQ. That was indeed the case for a long time, but nowadays a large proportion of the newcomers have to – or want to – leave again after a few years.”
Urban geographer Fenne Pinkster, affiliated with the University of Amsterdam, has been researching the sense of home in the city for years. “Feeling at home is established through everyday routines and experiences and takes time to build.” According to her, the declining sense of home among Amsterdammers is therefore not problematic in itself. “It reflects the state of the city: if half the population changes within ten years and many young people and expats move in, you inevitably get a lower sense of home.”
That rapid turnover is a problem for another reason, however: the city needs people who have lived there longer and feel connected, because then they are also willing to invest in it, says Pinkster. “They form the social fabric needed to sustain the city.”
However, according to her, it does not make sense to make 'feeling at home' a policy goal or to steer towards it as a municipality. “It is better to focus on the underlying conditions, such as affordability in the housing market and sufficient variety in housing types, so that people who want to stay in the city can also stay.”
What Pinkster believes deserves attention are the social and spatial differences in feeling at home. “Apparently, it is less easy for people in neighborhoods in Nieuw-West, Noord, and Zuidoost to feel at home, and they identify less with the city. That kind of emotional inequality touches upon fundamental questions about what kind of city Amsterdam wants to be and for whom the city wants to be there.”
Familiar Strangers
Draaisma believes that Amsterdam could take a leaf out of New York’s book. Although that city is much more expensive, it is, just like Amsterdam, an international city with a high rate of inflow and outflow of temporary residents. “New York has a different kind of sense of home. One in which cultural diversity and the international character are celebrated. Almost every day there is a parade of a population group: one day Colombians or Croatians, the next day the Dutch or the Irish. City dwellers there are 'familiar strangers': you don't know each other, there are differences, but you are still connected.”
This could be an enticing prospect for Amsterdam. That might also call for a different view of the city: one in which expats, international students, and other temporary residents are not seen merely as passers-by, but as an essential part of Amsterdam. Feeling at home then lies less in recognition and more in the realization that differences and constant movement are part of the city.
Roelf Jan Duin
July 3, 2026
