The Dynamics of Urban Neighbourhood Development and Economics and Entrepreneurial Activity

This thesis has been centered around the question: do socio-economic develoopments in neighbourhoods have a significant effect on economic activity in these neighbourhoods? By means of principal component analysis, socio-economic development has been defined as a combination of three neighbourhood characteristics: income, housing value and social security levels. Socio-economic development has been found to be a significant driver of economic activity. This thesis adds that Dutch neighbourhoods have seen a trend of segregation between low-income and high-income neighbourhoods after the economic crisis of 2008. These combined findings show that policy makers should consider the segregating trend not only for the social point of view, which is predominantly negative about segregation, but also from an economic point of view. Furthermore, the Vogelaar policy, which was in place to improve socio-economic status of neighbourhoods does not seem to have produced significant effects on socio-economic neighbourhood development.