It sounds like this ruling is only speeding up the inevitable anyway, as the city has already revoked dozens of permits from area sex businesses it accused of being linked to organized crime, and a huge sweeping plan announced just last month set out a path toward cleansing the Red Light District of most of the prostitution and related businesses.
Yab Yum isn’t actually located in the Red Light District anyway. It’s a bit less than a kilometer away on the picturesque Singel canal, and all sex-related businesses in that area are marked for closing, according to Amsterdam’s ambitious 10-year-plan to remake the center of the city.
A small section of the Red Light District will remain, including the window prostitutes themselves, but well over half of it is planned to be scrubbed up and turned into an “upscale shopping” area. Prostitution itself remains legal in the Netherlands, as it is in many other European countries, and there are no plans yet announced to force a major cutback on the city’s famous coffeeshops, although rules on these establishments have continued to become more strict in the past years, and the number of them continues to go down.
