Is the design of a city a decisive factor in the development of violent behavior by its inhabitants? The discussion following the 2005 riots in the French suburbs shows that many blame the concept of La Ville Radieuse and its most famous founding father, the architect Le Corbusier, for the social degeneration of the banlieues. For some critics, like the British author Theodore Dalrymple, this ‘totalitarian’ architecture symbolizes the evil of the welfare state with its social security, mass immigration, egalitarism and its elites with their blindness for the threat to the western Enlightenment values coming from these ‘black’ suburbs. However, the truth of urban development is that cities are fundamentally unpredictable. After several generations a building will be used in a completely different way than perceived, by people whose existence one wasn't aware of and in a social context one couldn't have predicted. This ‘natural’ development is labeled as the failure of a project, often leading to a policy of repression and demolition. However, local politicians, project developers and architects should realize that it's not their actions that determine the development of cities, but the way the inhabitants use and interpret their environment. They create their own city. Instead of replacing the inhabitants by demolishing their houses, we probably have no other choice than getting to know these quarters better and renovate these together with and for the local inhabitants.

Sinds begin jaren negentig wordt een restrictief beleid gevoerd om illegaliteit en de uitwassen die hiermee gepaard zouden gaan te bestrijden. Maar is een restrictief illegalenbeleid hier wel een geschikt middel voor? Deze vraag heeft centraal gestaan in het onderzoek ‘Het leven gaat door’ waarin het leven in de illegaliteit aan de hand van interviews met 88 uitgeprocedeerde asielzoekers uit Utrecht in kaart is gebracht. Het blijkt dat een restrictief beleid illegaliteit niet bestrijdt en problemen niet oplost, maar dat het juist problemen voor illegaal verblijvenden én samenleving veroorzaakt. Het huidige restrictieve beleid lijkt dan ook averechts te werken.

This article examines the relationship between the juridical status of asylum migrants (accepted asylum migrants with a residence permit or citizenship, still in procedure, illegal residence) and crime. We argue that a weak legal status results in socio-economic deprivation that can result in criminal involvement. Using both registrations of asylum seekers as well as police data about suspects of offences, we find that rejected asylum seekers that remain in the country illegally are more involved in crime than asylum seekers still in procedure, who in turn are more often registered as a suspect than accepted asylum migrants with a residence permit or Dutch citizenship. We also find that rejected asylum migrants are more involved in ‘survival crimes’ like theft. In other words: having a weak legal status increases rates of offending, especially property crimes. When studying the relation between social inequality and crime, it is important to take the juridical status of immigrants into consideration.

This article focuses on the differences in perception that appear when the English and Dutch discourses on anti-social behaviour and street terror are compared. The political and media discourses in the Netherlands focus on the migration background of the youth responsible (mainly Moroccan juveniles) whereas in England and Wales the possible influence of discrimination is stressed. The analysis of the two discourses reveals that although the problems in the two countries are in essence comparable, very different discourses have developed.

In een column geeft een redacteur of auteur zijn of haar visie op een bepaald onderwerp.

De toepassing van het Unierecht op de Nederlandse woningcorporatie is geen rustig bezit. Na het in het vorige nummer van dit blad besproken arrest van het Hof van Justitie van de EGin de zaak Sint Servatius, waarin het vrije verkeer van kapitaal werd toegepast op de voor Nederlandse woningcorporaties geldende territoriale beperkingen, volgde op 15 december 2009 het Commissiebesluit waarbij na jaren van onderhandelen een aanpassing van het bestaande steunregime voor woningcorporaties werd goedgekeurd.

Deze rubriek geeft een overzicht van recente wet- en regelgeving.