Around 20-25 years ago, a news crew from Al-Jarzeera visited the Bijlmer to make a report about this 'Bad neighborhood'. They interviewed a number of youngsters living there, hearing their complaints about how dangerous and crime-ridden it was. The news crew had a bit of a WTF moment and quickly concluded that 'bad neighborhood' was a very relative term. They made a brilliant follow-up report where they took some of the kids from the Bijlmer they had interviewed, to a 'bad neighborhood' in (I think it was) Maroc for a week. Lets just say those kids had a whole new appreciation for the Bijlmer when they got back home. 😁 Yes, for Dutch standards is was bad, on a global scale, not so much.

Just imagine a US ghetto, the the government actually invests, allows dozens of small shops, markets, builds a cinema, great public transport, art, brings in artists, expats and builds parks. That's the best way to fight crime, because you don't fight crime, you heal crime if you want to solve it.

I have lived in the Bijlmer from 1998 to 2001. There was a lot of crime and a lot of drug abuse. Then the city renovated the entire neighborhood. Build offices, entertainment, new apartment buildings, a new train station etcetera. Nowadays the Bijlmer is a lot nicer than it was 25 years ago.

It used to be bad Charlie. There was a lot of gang culture and crime in general. Fortunately the city of Amsterdam has done a good job over the years improving this neighborhood. Still wouldn't say it's one of the best, but it most certainly is not as bad as it used to be in the late 80's and early 90's. It's hard to get rid of a bad name.

I'm an old (Dutch) man, living in Amsterdam, who used to live in NYC, and used to study in Harlem (NYC). The first burough I ended up in NY was the Bronx, and mind you this was the late 70's...!! Both Harlem and the Bronx I would consider to be a ghetto at that time. If you compare this to the Bijlmer, or Amsterdam Zuid-Oost, you can't say the Bijlmer is a ghetto. It used to be quite sketchy, but has approved a lot. It's a wonderful place with nice people, but for people from outside of Amsterdam it still might be some kind of no-go area, although I would recommend visiting, to get a good feel about this neigbourhood....!!

De Dutch getto was a situation from independent Suriname .300.000 off them came here in a short time.

I worked in the Bijlmer but to be honest i never felt unsafe even 20-30 years ago, maybe thats because i brought up multicultural and visited Amsterdam a lot when i was young too or just not been in less safe places if they were there. I have seen it change gradually and i think The Netherlands did a great job mixing different kind of buildings for businesses , shops, housing (different kinds) etc. to attract different kinds of people with different levels of income so to say. Personally i really like Zuid-Oost Amsterdam (the Bijlmer), indeed so much to do, IKEA, a lot of car mechanics, and the multi cultural food is just WOW, i love trying something i never had before and just a day out in the shopping area is just amazing there. If anyone visits Amsterdam, certainly also go to Zuid-Oost (south-east) of Amsterdam, you will not regret it. But this is just my experience and i dont live there, so take all this just with a pinch of salt :)

I lived both in the Bijlmer and Woensel-West in Eindhoven. Both former ghetto's are now really cool places to live.

Love how you remember kroketten and bitterballen, that cracked me up x) i dig your reactions man, watch them once in a while , if they pop up in my recommended, keep up the good work , come visit sometime eh ? x)

I've seen the Bijlmer get build in 1970 and 1980. These high rise buildings at 05.26 were the solution, the citycouncel thought. Very green, car free etc..lots of outdoor space. But these building were to big. Hunderds of houses in one building, there was no social cohesion. Then in 1975, 200.000 Surinam people needed housing. While being fine, the whole dynamic of the burrough changed. In the next 20 years the dutch inhabitants moved to Almere and Lelystad. Citycouncel started to demolish a lot of the big buildings. Replaced them with houses at ground level. Nowadays it's a rather normal neighberhood. The part in the video with the office buildings is just that, business district, no houses there. The ij in Bijlmer sounds like bye or fry.

Please don’t forget that the Netherlands is the mdma capital of the world. We also dabble quite a bit in coke haha. Because of the open boarders in europe and the harbour of rotterdam criminals can easily smuggle drugs in and out of the country. And with drugs comes drug violence. There have been A LOT of devastating liquidations by criminals over drugs. In this video I don’t really see much that resembles dutch hoods. Maybe because it’s been regentrified. I will admit that dutch gangs handle things very differently from what i’ve seem about us gang violence. For example, drive-by shootings are almost unheard of here. Hope this cleared some things up, loved the video:)

Yeah...in the eighties and nineties it was really bad...after the famous ELAL plaincrash it has been slowly got to the level it is now...which is pretty good... definitely not the worst "wijk" in the Netherlands...on top of that, there was a huge prison which was closed in 2016 ...

There are certainly neighborhoods that are worse than Bijlmer, but you won't find a neighborhood that you would consider a ghetto.

Hey nice to see you again. The bijlmer was back in the 80's and 90's a little ghetto. Gangs where there. There was also in the past a plane crash in to an building. Evercince it is becoming more and more saver in the bijlmer.

Don't mistake this for The Netherlands not having bad neighborhoods. There are a lot of big cities out there that have some pretty bad spots, where crime rates are very high. It really helps when a city invests in these neighborhoods though...

Would love to see a hertog jan beer in the shelves there, lets hope someone will send one

You got the right kind of beer on that shelf behind you. Those two are good. A La Trappe Quadrupel would look good there too.

When I was 14 in 1990,I met a girl from the Bijlmer, when we were on holiday and became friends. My dad said she could come to our house any time,but I wasn't allowed to go to the Bijlmer. There was a lot of crime and a lot of drugabuse like others already said. My dad was a tiler and worked a few times overthere, and while he was taking his stuff out of his car he couldn't bring all of it at once and then stole it out of his car. I didn't listen so I went there, and back then I had never seen a heroin addict. And there was one shooting up in her building, I was shocked and she just said "oh walk passed him, he doesn't do anything, he's always here. The building went by alfabet and the "f" neighbourhood had a bad name back then. But a lot did change as you can see in the video

No it isn’t a ghetto at all. I wrote it already as comment. : There is nothing wrong with the Bijlmer. Many people of all nationalities live there. people who are also different in terms of their income. Many residents would not want to leave because they are having a great time there. The suggestion made in some videos that it is a ghetto is absolutely incorrect. The Bijlmer is definitely not a ghetto such as for instance in France ,the impoverished suburbs of Paris, Marseille, Lyon and in the United States in for instance Chicago, Miami etc and the favelas (slums built in the metropolises of South America. Etc etc . The Bijlmer is a very liveable area of ​​Amsterdam and can't be compared to it at all. Real ghettos don’t exist in Netherlands . However, there are working-class neighborhoods that receive some extra attention

There are bad neighborhoods in NL, but not as bad as ghettos in the US. City councels will upgrade those areas to make it better, like the Bijlmer.

I used to work in the Bijlmer in 2004 'till 2007. It wasn't a place I felt safe in during the evening, due to drugs and groups of ppl looking for trouble. However, it is multi-cultural and nature is nearby. Prices are much more affordable than anywhere else in Amsterdam and crime went down in the past decade. If you can look past the ugly buildings it defo is an option! Also... the food from the market stalls? Yup, a lot of good stuff! Last but not least, I do not know if you've heard of the 'Bijlmerramp'? This happened in 1992. A plane crashed on an appartment-building. That is also part of the imagery many ppl have of the place. It made it more desolate; all those visuals were pure pain and fear. It only added to the 'troosteloze' (nice word for you to learn;-) image of the buildings and area.

I poured the legs for that statue with concrete at the beginning 😜 so you know 😂

"With 180 different nationalities, Amsterdam is home to one of the widest varieties of nationalities of any city in the world"

I lived in the Bijlmer from 1998 and 2004 Just before the renovation. Despite there were bad places, it wasnt a getto. I enjoyed the time of living. The diversity 198 nationalities.

Netherlands doesnt have real ghettos, because of social security, but yeah thats BAD according to Americans 😅

compare this neighborhoud to Kingston Ave in Philadelphia... we have no ghettos

It looks like paradise to me. I wouldn't mind living there.

20 years ago it wasnt a nice pkace to live. It sure has changed. In my opinikn there are still some getto's in the NL; The Hage Schilderswijk, Utrecht Kanalen eiland, Rotterdam zuid. But it ll never be as a project in the US.

So, some rich expat living in the area literally built AFTER the time when the place was at its worst, incidentally again diverting social housing from the pool when wait lists for locals can be 12 years, casually racisting about 'educating the locals'... yess massa. It wasn't that Dutch policies explicitly forbade black people from living in many areas, concentrating them in the areas this snooty [expletive] does NOT show, it wasn't that your resume went to the 'no' pile based on zipcode, it wasn't that they put large families in flats designed for small families and childless couples, it wasn't that maintenance was nonexistent and waste management highly inadequate... The blacks just needed 'educating'... Let's see her show the K- and G- zone, where I lived. We literally stepped over dead junkies to get to the elevator, to go to school. Was it as bad as the US? Hell naw. Did my first flat come with bullet holes in the walls? Yes. Sory Charlie, like I said before, I think you'll be an asset if you move here, but you have to stop platforming the kind of people we don't need here, and the kind of narrative that is gentrifying our neighborhoods.

I love Amsterdam, have a great weekend and say hi to Amy ✌️🇳🇱

Yup ive been there and also when its till was a a "bad" neighbourhood about 30 years ago. Most of the really bad ones have been and bad earia's have been mostly fixed nowadays. We do have what we call achterstandswijken but most if not all are perfectly safe to walk through. Some aren't as "white" as some people would like and it does have its disadvantage for schooling. Lots of non native elemtairy school childeren do cause a problem on the overall quality of the education. Not that they are really bad schools but a to large % needs to be put in overcoming that problem and thus doesn't go to primairy education but to fixing the disadvantage. Wich is not ideaal for the native speaking childeren. I don't think the Netherlands has any neighnourhoods left that come even close to Ghetto's. Just some where the majority of the people ain't white and while statistics say they are slightly less safe then normall neighbourhoods the feeling of unsafty comes from white people not beeing used to be the minority. I'm a white middleage male and worked most of my adult life in some of thew worst neignourhoods in the Netherlands and i never felt unsafe there. I did het that feeling in the drug infected earia's ussually around the bigger trainstations. But those are mostly ok now to.

and yes a little like New York the city people shop in their own part where they live “usually”

It was always a beautiful neighborhood, with lot of green and nature. My youngest sister lived there for some time, in it’s bad days. But even then there were different grades of bad.

The Bijlmer was the solution to the housing shortage after the war. The idea was great big blocks with spacious appartements with lots if green. Cars and pedestrians would have their own place. But a few mistakes were made that caused the downfall of the Bijlmer.There were houses but that was al there was. Stores came much later and also the metro came yeas later. Every housingblock had their own parking garage but it was not free and for most people it was to expensive. Another problem was that the houseblocks were accessible for everybody you could just walk in everywhere you wantend. By the time the Bijlmer was finished cities like, Purmerend, Almere and Lelystad were on the rise. Cities with different type of houses more family friendly. So lots of people who lived there and the beginning moved. Lots of appartements were empty again. By the the former Dutch colonie Suriname became independent and that caused a lot Surinam people to move to the Netherlands. But they could not get houses in Amsterdam so they went to Bijlmer and illegally entered the houses. After a while they were allowed to stay but they have to start paying rent. But lots of them were unemployed so that was another issue. And because the metro was build a whole neighborhood in the city centre was demolished but that was also a area with lots of drugs addicts and they were told just go to the Bijlmer. So with lots of unemployed immigrants and drugs addicts in on place problems started. The housing company did not invest in the neighbourhood and more immigrants came from other parts of the world. House were rented out illegaly. After the plane crash in 1992 than a shift came the city saw that there were living normal people in De Bijlmer. So that when they started to tear down the most notorious housing block. More police were patrolling the streets. The Ajax stadium was build that brought a positive effect to the Bijlmer.

I've lived in the Bijlmer from 1981 to 2018 and I can honestly say it changed a lot ... but it's still far from being a great neighbourhood. In the 1980's, the H-section, where I lived, was swarming with gang activity when gangs began getting run out of the K-section, and the G-section. My friends and I got into a few fights to keep these punks from setting up shop where we lived. As a part of the "urban renewal", to rid the old neighbourhoods of the junkies and other bad elements, they tore down many of the apartment buildings to make way for regular houses. They also raised the prices, making the affordable houses slightly less affordable. This was the city's effort to move a certain group of people away, and to attract others with fatter pocketbooks. It backfired, because of the amount of burglaries, which authorities quickly denied. These same authorities were blissfully unaware that there was gang activity in the Bijlmer. They can raise the prices all they want, and put up expensive hotels around Bijlmer Station where all the concerts are, but it will never be Greenwich Village. The Bijlmer will keep on being just another junkie infested, gangland with multiple shootings every week, like so many other neighbourhoods in Amsterdam. And it's only getting worse. Don't let anyone tell you different.

Ij is pronounced like the word I. So its B{I}lmur.

Rotterdam has more ghettos. And more weapons and killing this year. Mainly because it has a big harbour. And then you have Almere and Lelystad that have a worse reputation than the Bijlmer I think.

The Netherlands doesn't really have any ghetto's. But, around 15 years ago we had a thing called Vogelaarwijken. These are neighborhood named after minister of living, neighborhoods and integration, Ella Vogelaar. Minster Vogelaar made a list of the worst neighborhoods in the country. You could name this neighborhoods the Dutch ghetto's. The neighborhoods on this list received extra money from the government to improve the standard of living. I have lived in one of these neighborhoods for around 5 years and although it definitely wasn't the best neighborhood of the city I would not consider it to be a ghetto. The main thing why this neighborhood is considered to be bad is because there's living more people with a migration background, unemployed people and people that have to live with a low income. In my opinion these aren't necessarily bad people. They only have some more struggles to overcome than the average. And still, even it was considered to be a bad neighborhood I never felt unsafe or anything. In general it's completely safe and you will not encounter any unsafe situations. Of course I only experienced that one neighborhood, so I can't judge about other ones.

I live an area just outside the Bijlmer, but many would consider it part of the Bijlmer. I’ve lived here for over 20 years, after moving here from LA. It is the best hidden secret of Amsterdam. It may not be the prettiest of neighborhoods, but most areas are safe. I like the multicultural feel and everything is close-by and easy to get to. Within 5 minutes you’re in the farmlands and small villages outside of Amsterdam. The city center is only 20 min by metro. The biggest plus is that housing is more affordable. It may have been a bit worse 20 years ago, but nothing at all comparable to ghettos in the US. And the only crime I’ve encountered is that someone broke into our storage unit downstairs. Compare that with friends in West Hollywood being mugged while walking from their cars to their houses. There are sketchy parts but they aren’t bigger than a street corner or block. Violent crime is increasing, but still very little compared with the US. So called “gangs” are on the rise, but it’s from being influenced by American culture. Violent crimes happen all over Amsterdam, not just the Bijlmer and mostly from drug gangs trying to kill each other. But those are random and few and far between. People stay away here because of it’s bad reputation from the past and I wonder how bad that even was. I’ll probably be making a video soon about Amsterdam zuidoost, which is Amsterdam south-east about the cool spots to visit here.

We don't have actual ghettos in the Netherlands, sure there's neighbourhoods with a lot of lower economic status, crime and drug abuse, but ghettos belong to a completely different order of magnitude.

I sleep often with my husband in the hotel in the Bijlmer when we goning toe succer match. It's no getho to me. You must search about the Bijlerramp

You ask yourself the wrong question Charlie .. The Bijlmer has transformed from a ghetto to a nice and bright place by a lot of effort from the government. It is the waterbed-effect. You better do a reaction video on " De Oude Pijp ".

Bijlmer is indeed full of crime but its more organized these days. But there is still ghettos in the netherlands, for example in rotterdam or arroun the hague.

Okay, so it's always De (The) Bijlmer, nobody calls it Bijlmer without the De.

There was a plain crash there, kills alot of people, after that they start changing alot of things,but i never felt un-safe there, infact there multi culture festival, is one of the best in the Netherlands

Waiting for Emma !

Well to be honest.... if you look at how many people live in the US and how many crimes there are and how many people live in the Netherlands the crime rate over here is a lot higher than in the US. Also a lot of murders each year in the Netherlands. And it keeps going up.. not in Amsterdam... but in other places in the Netherlands.

bit unfair, as the bijlmer had gazillion euros pumped into it since the plane crash. thus no bijlmer isn't a ghetto. also a lot of the old residents left. but if you go to i.e. slinge in rotterdam, or schilderwijk in the Hague or overvecht/kanaleneiland/zuilen in utrecht...then no denying that it is our version of a ghetto. was raised in those neigborhoods.

Maybe America need to renovated the entire ghetto neighborhoods piece by piece just what Amsterdam did for the Bijlmer..

The bijlmer used to be a bad getto, especially at night. Crime rates went trough the roof here. This was decades ago, but the reputation is still there. Despite all the efforts of the city of Amsterdam to make it a nice place. Wich it now is. She proved it.😊 Btw Charlie, how you say bye is how we say bij and how you say mire is how we say mer. Put an L between those and you will say fluently Bijlmer. Looking forward for your next one.

oeh ! you have kanjer-cookies 😋 !

In Netherlands there ain’t NO “Streets of Amsterdam” In NO city, not like New York streets or parts of that city. So Bijlmer nothing compared to US parts, city or States where you shouldn’t be going it is all safe

A getto isn.t the same as in the usa .Other level .Livingstandaart is here much higher.

It was a getto and how tot would still be Notting like we see about the US, the Bijlmer does have a rough history. But she didn’t adres more of that. The lots of Suriname refugees when they became independent. The heroine pandemic what also hits those neighbourhoods more. And you can’t talk about thé Bijlmer without addressing the Bijlmer plain crash. In 1992 a cargo carrier boing 747 crashed in to one of the flats 239 people died (that they known of because there were lots of illegal migrants. Afterwards they demolished the flat and rejuvenated the neighbourhood.

Only in our behavior and behind our closed frontdoors.🤨

you pronounce it like bijl-mer bijl as in axe.

Yes, our ghetto's are hard to live in...hahahaha

We don’t have ghettos here.

The bijlmer wel there are muchs worse places than that here in the netherlands

If you want to see a real ghetto, look up Amsterdam Osdorp. I grew up there and can confirm it was ghetto af 😅 . It was even called the ghetto of Amsterdam in a magazine once. Maybe there are videos about Osdorp somewhere, but idk It probably won't compare to a USA Ghetto tho

You don't want to walk there at night.

Again: There's the Netherlands and there's Amsterdam

I think I've never had food "out of the wall". You don't know how long it has been sitting there. It's like making coffee in the morning and keep drinking it during the day. Horrendous! The only thing I can recommend is taking the lowest doors. You can see the food (the girl looks pretty small) and it probably has a higher turnover. Just go to a normal "frietzaak" and order your food. Of course you have to know Dutch because they're going to ask you a couple of things. Do I want to see, or hear, other nationalities? Not really. De Bijlmer looks like the Soviet Union era. Everything too square.

Why is everyone from Netherlands a model

I don't understand why diversity is almost always automatically dubbed as being preferable, as if it were inherently good. That's not me being racist or anything -- I live in a very multicultural neighborhood of Rotterdam. I just don't understand how it outweighs monoculturalism generally, almost by default. Sure, you have lots of culinary facilities blending together, but the problem of segregation in terms of social life is also more likely to arise in any of these multicultural neighborhoods. It's not all good when purely looking at multiculturalism so I don't understand how you can highlight it as an objective pro. It depends on what you're looking for and what you're enjoying in your every-day life living in these neighborhoods. Now, I understand it is her opinion but the way she communicates it gives me a different feeling about it all. An area with a relative low amount of original natives, particularly of the older generations, could so easily lead to you grow out of touch with the more predominant identity, the history, and instead stimulate you to live more as a global citizen than anything else. Go out into the old Dutch towns. Visit a market. Visit an old church or mill. Talk with the people there. I think there's a misconception of people believing that the people are more staunch and closed there. Monocultural towns in the countryside have thrived for decades and centuries, even sometimes with tiny groups of immigrants of their own, like in the case of my hometown. They were always welcomed and part of the community, as long as they contributed to the local economy, and this was in the 1800s and on.

Its not multicultural as the host nations culture has bin whiped out. Its invaded by foreigner and not dutch anymore.

wanneer je in Nederland woont waarom spreek je dan geen Nederlands? Dat is toch wel voorwaarde 1 om te integreren. En wanneer je denkt dat de Bijlmer een getto is - kom op zeg. Dat staat in geen verhouding tot heel veel andere grote steden wereldwijd.

The ghetto in the Bijlmer has long since disappeared. The municipality has swept it clean.

The Bijlmer is the poor black neighbourhood in the Dutch capital, so our ghetto. However, our second-biggest city, Rotterdam, has the highest crime & poverty rate of the Netherlands. The rates aren't extremely higher than in Amsterdam, but they are higher. Rotterdam was built in a similar period as the Bijlmer, because it had been bombed by the nazis. Because of this, it has relatively car-centric infrastructure, and ugly flats like the Bijlmer. However, it is also slightly less multicultural than Amsterdam, so that may classify it less ghetto-like.

I think this lady must be vibe death because calling the bijlmer a 'cozy' place is insane 2 me