Huygensstraat

Since the completion of the neighbourhood in 2004, there has been a clear decline and impoverishment. Liveability is structurally under pressure. Assessment: The neighbourhood scores insufficient on the following aspects: Safety, Community spirit, Hygiene, Education / upbringing climate, Green spaces, Facilities, Accessibility. Explanation per aspect: Safety: Parking and driving on pavements and footpaths. Unsafe situations for pedestrians and playing children. Nuisance from hanging groups and fatbike groups, especially in the evenings. Insufficient visible enforcement. Community: High turnover in apartments, little connection to the neighbourhood. Hardly any social cohesion or mutual accountability culture. Little involvement in the living environment. Hygiene: Structural dog poop on grass fields; the clean-up duty is not observed. Lots of litter, including sweet and crisp wrappers, also in private gardens. Insufficient cleaning and maintenance by the municipality. Education / upbringing climate: Children play outside without supervision. Norms and values regarding waste, respect for others' property and public space are visibly lacking. Negative role model for younger children. Green: Poorly maintained green spaces. Grass fields polluted and therefore not usable for recreation. Unattractive and unkempt street scene. Facilities: Insufficient parking facilities, partly due to company vans. No clear facilities to combat nuisance (such as extra bins or supervised play areas). Accessibility: Pavements and footpaths often blocked by parked vehicles. Poor accessibility for the elderly, prams and people with disabilities. What could be improved: Active and visible enforcement of parking, dog poop and nuisance. Tackling long-term parked company vans. Improvement of municipal maintenance of green and public space. Placement of extra bins and targeted cleaning actions. Structural deployment of neighbourhood police and enforcement officers, especially in the evenings. Measures to strengthen social cohesion and encourage residents to take more responsibility. Clear communication about norms, rules and consequences.

Nice house Lots of green Shopping centre nearby Public transport accessibility could be better Not safe due to nuisance from youths, who learn their behaviour from their parents. Disrespectful, selfish. No sense of community. Hygiene: shit everywhere on the grass field is not cleaned up, youths just throw packaging into gardens.

The neighbourhood started off quite well. New houses, new residents. However, after a number of residents moved away and were replaced by the next residents, it has deteriorated a lot. Besides a huge increase in nuisance from night flights from Schiphol, the mutual social behaviour has dropped to zero. It is a neighbourhood with many children who find the antisocial behaviour of their parents so normal that they don't know any better and copy their parents' behaviour. In recent years, there has been a lot of nuisance and vandalism by whole groups of terrorising children. These children are getting older and are now starting to show different behaviour or moving away. Addressing people and talking about it is not accepted. And bullying is a daily occurrence, especially if you keep your distance from these people. Because you already know that talking and addressing them backfires. Because if you don't join in or show the same antisocial behaviour, you are treated like a pariah. In Kudelstaart there is supervision by a neighbourhood police officer, and after the shooting you see more police and enforcement. However, if you contact the neighbourhood officer or ask the police for help, you can forget about it. We have plenty of beautiful nature and greenery in and around the neighbourhood. Education could be better. There is childcare, primary school education (the level is not great) and there is a VMBO (which also has a not-so-good reputation). However, for children who go to havo or vwo, you have to look further. Accessibility by public transport is very poor. There is a bus station in Aalsmeer that the bus from Kudelstaart goes to. However, the bus does not connect at all with the other buses. It would be nice if at least one bus every quarter or half hour went directly to the nearest train station (e.g. Hoofddorp) without having to transfer. Maybe the tram from Uithoorn could be extended to Kudelstaart. Facilities are sufficient but could also be better.

Reasonably neat neighbourhood. Unfortunately, there is nuisance from screaming neighbours, drunk neighbours, antisocial behaviour towards neighbours who distance themselves from it. So if you don't belong or don't want to belong, you'd better brace yourself. Little empathy and understanding. A lot of nuisance from vandalism of cars and personal belongings. In addition, there are regularly groups of young people who terrorise the neighbourhood by "ring and run", and if you don't respond, they then bang on the windows. Furthermore, windows are smeared with eggs and yoghurt. The neighbourhood police officer is very hard to find, the police do nothing, confronting the neighbours backfires.

I personally never really felt unsafe in the neighbourhood. I think it's a nice neighbourhood to live in with hardly any problems. A small, pleasant village, but public transport is a bit lacking. There is only one bus that runs every half hour, and the direct connection to Amsterdam-Zuid will be discontinued in the summer of 2024. Other than that, it's an extremely quiet living environment.