ISSN 0004-0894 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2005 Area (2005) 37.1, 100–109 Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Place-based social exclusion: redlining in the Netherlands Manuel B Aalbers AMIDSt Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Email: M.B.Aalbers@uva.nl Revised manuscript received November 2004 ‘Redlining’ is a form of place-based exclusion. It is widely documented in the US, but not in Europe. This paper focuses on a comparative analysis of redlining practices in the two largest cities of the Netherlands: Amsterdam and Rotterdam. It shows that redlining was common practice in Rotterdam in 1999. In 2001, no signs of redlining were found in Rotterdam. However, ‘yellowlining’ (lower loan-to-value ratios) was still common in some parts of Rotterdam. In Amsterdam, no neighbourhoods were faced with redlining in either 1999 or 2001. However, in 1999 some neighbourhoods were yellowlined. This paper aims to get a better understanding of the nature and the institutional context of redlining in the Netherlands by explaining how the differences in redlining practices between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and between 1999 and 2001, can be explained. The National Mortgage Guarantee as well as socio-historical, and housing and mortgage market differences and changes, are instrumental in explaining these differences in redlining practices. Key words: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, mortgages, neighbourhood, social exclusion, redlining Introduction Redlining refers to lending (or insurance) discrimination that bases credit decisions on the location of a property to the exclusion of characteristics of the borrower or property. Usually it means that lenders will not make loans to areas with African Americans or to other perceived risks to real estate investments. (Hillier 2003, 395) Because redlining usually hits non-whites, it is almost exclusively conceptualized as related to race. That, however, does not mean that redlining equals racial discrimination: redlining is, by definition, a geographic notion. The debate in the US, however, has shifted from redlining to applicant-level discri- mination, fuelled in part by new detailed data collected by the federal government beginning in the early 1990s. Consequently, the geographical dimension in research has diminished and the last decade evidence has been found for racial discrimination, but hardly so for redlining. Indeed, the anti-redlining legislation – including the disclosure of mortgage data – formed a strong incentive against redlining practices. The origin of the concept is to be found in Boston where, in the 1930s, city maps were discovered on which was indicated in red that certain neighbour- hoods were excluded from home mortgages. Sub- jected groups are more afflicted by redlining than dominant groups. Indeed, subjected groups are often non-whites, but that does not mean that they are always non-whites. Redlining, by its nature, hits all residents from an area, no matter what their colour is. People are not only excluded on the basis of race, but also on the basis of place (Kasinitz 2000). As will be argued in the next section, redlining is a form of place-based social exclusion.