ABSTRACT
In the postwar period, Dutch cities saw tremendous changes in economic, political, sociocultural, and spatial relations. In the economy the postwar period up to the 1960s saw a new era of industrialization which fed a period of economic growth. This chapter suggests that preliminary attempt is made to theorize upon tremendous changes in city development, paying special attention to the related reorganization of urban leisure. It focuses on changes within the sphere of urban leisure policy and the sphere of urban leisure lifestyles. Urban leisure has become part of the ongoing modernization of city life to its postmodern extremes, rendering the boundaries between conventional fields of culture and pleasure, or between art and entertainment, free-floating. Within urban leisure policy, in the Netherlands at least, attention has more and more been directed at developing the inner-city area, the inner city being the focus of modern culture.
