The city council wants to put an end to criminality and trafficking in women in this notorious, yet highly popular part of town.

The process has already started, but people who run local bars, brothels and souvenir shops are not impressed at all by the council's plans to bring new life to 'their' part of town and have got together recently in a group named Platform 1012 (the district's postcode number) to do battle with the municipality.
 
Wim Boef (his surname also means 'villain' in Dutch) is chairman of Platform 1012, and he describes the area in which the Red Light District is located – the narrow streets and canals that once lay just behind the main harbour area – as 'the best in the world”. He continues: “Just look around you, such an enormous variety of people. And they're all enjoying the place, whether they're grabbing a bit to eat, or going to a sex theatre or sex shop. If you want to see paintings by Rembrandt, you go to the museum; for a visit to a prostitute or sex show, you come here.”
 
That's something which three young men from the Irish capital, Dublin, are happy to confirm. For them, like many other tourists, a trip to Amsterdam isn't complete without a visit to a 'coffeeshop'  - where marijuana and hashish can be bought and consumed – and to the Red Light District. “This is really unique. All these women sitting there openly, almost naked, in the windows, that's something you can only find here.”

Casa Rosso

Yet, Amsterdam's council has decided to take on the local sex industry and those who run it. The number of 'women at the windows' must be reduced – in other words: the sex industry's hold on the district is to be lifted.

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