CityLab Daily: A Tourist Hotspot Begs Travelers to Show Some Respect
What We’re Following
Damage control: What’s a city to do when its efforts to attract tourists are too successful? In traditionally laid-back Amsterdam, locals’ patience is wearing thin with a spike in tourism and disruptive visitors who are just there to party. The city is trying to get things under control: It removed its “I Amsterdam” sign that became an Instagram hit, and it banned tours of the Red Light District because people were coming to gawk. “You could say quality tourism people travel because they’re inquisitive and want to learn,” says a founder of an Amsterdam tourism think tank. “Unfortunately, that kind of tourism is on the downward trend.”
But official efforts to stem the tide aren’t all working in concert. On one hand, the city has tried to restrict Airbnb rentals and hotel construction, and the country’s tourism board has even decided it will no longer promote the capital as a destination. Meanwhile, airports are due for a massive expansion and a vast new terminal for cruise ships is in the works, setting the stage for further inflating the tourist bubble. Today on CityLab, Feargus O’Sullivan reports: A Tourist Hotspot Begs Travelers to Show Some Respect
More on CityLab
All Over the Map
Her father, she said, was a brilliant cartographer who was deeply committed to traditional conservative principles like free will and limited government. As a child, she said, she was schooled in those same principles, but every successive gerrymandered map he created only solidified her conviction that he had abandoned them in a quest to entrench his party in permanent control.
“He had me with the idea that we are made to be free,” she said. “And then he lost me.”
The New York Times has a wild story about the late Thomas B. Hofeller, a Republican strategist who crafted partisan political maps across the country, and how his estranged daughter discovered that he played a role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The Times reports that Hofeller analyzed Texas legislative districts and concluded that drawing maps based on the number of American citizens eligible to vote—instead of on total population—“would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,” but would require a citizenship question to make it happen. Read the full story here.
CityLab context: How Gerrymandering Limits City Power
What We’re Reading
Cities are making big climate promises. Keeping them can be tough. (NPR)
The first public schools in the U.S. will start to use facial recognition next week (BuzzFeed News)
How a city in fear brutalized the Central Park Five (New York Times)
Tesla’s electric vehicles changed the world. They’re also doomed. (Digital Trends)
Black homebuyers in Chicago lost at least $3.2 billion in today’s dollars because of predatory contracts between 1950 and 1970 (Chicago Sun Times)
Tell your friends about the CityLab Daily! Forward this newsletter to someone who loves cities and encourage them to subscribe. Send your own comments, feedback, and tips to hello@citylab.com.