I live in Amsterdam since 2012 and visited often before. Tourism has increased massively. You might remember having tourist season, where it got busy over the summer, but outside of it it wasn’t too crazy. These days it’s tourist season year round. With them comes stupid tourist shops (nutella shops were all the rage, now it’s candy shops).

The amount of people getting on cheap flights and then absolutely fucked up in the city center is saddening. The red light district has been shrunk by closing many windows, so these people now congregate in only a few streets around the oude kerk. On the weekend you could walk over their heads. Next step the city wants to take is close the red light district completely and move the prostitution to an ‘erotic center’. None of the stadsdelen want it in their part of town, so I doubt it will be successful. I think it’s also ridiculous to kill such a historic part of the city (prostitution on the Wallen is happening continuously since the 15th century).

Outside of the city center the city still has great spirit. Hardly any tourists and still plenty of excitement to be had. Of course the city keeps developing, for better and for worse (housing crisis is hitting hard), but this is the nature of almost all living cities. I really enjoy living here, although I rarely visit the city center anymore. I have everything I want in Noord, where it’s much more down to earth and mellow.