The Waterkwartier in Nijmegen-West is a real working-class neighbourhood. No student enclaves of the kind you find in Bottendaal or Oost, but lots of Nijmegen citizens in tracksuit bottoms.

Tim Methorst (19) studies Physics at Han University of Applied Sciences and lives in the Waterstraat.

‘I’ve lived in the Waterkwartier for about two and a half years. I know many people think it has a bad reputation, but I don’t really understand why. I don’t see any criminal activities and the neighbourhood is very quiet. The other day my street did make the news, because someone drove through it at 100 km per hour. Also, a couple of months ago, police agents were patrolling the neighbourhood after a shooting. It sounds bad, but I personally didn’t notice anything.’

‘I don’t talk with the neighbours much. I don’t make much of an effort either, because I’m busy enough as it is. I want to be careful not to sound prejudiced, but there are lots of chavs here, who sit in their front gardens in their tracksuit bottoms. In summer, they sit there all day, smoking and talking. You have to wonder: do they have a job or do they live on benefits? Some local residents think there are too many student houses here. I can imagine people are driven crazy by student houses where students come home drunk in the middle of the night and leave their bicycles lying all over the place. Our house is quiet; we only have a party once a year. I don’t think our neighbours mind us. I do have contact with one of them, an old lady.’

‘For my studies, I’ll soon be spending four months teaching in Nepal. When I come back, I’ll go back to living in the Waterkwartier. I think it’s a great place to live.’

Eva Jongsma (25) studied Spatial planning (recently graduated) and lives in the Voorstadslaan.

‘I moved to the Waterkwartier last summer. When I first moved in, I found the neighbourhood very quiet. I used to live in the centre, above Café TweeKeerBellen. There was always something happening there, but here you don’t hear anything. So far I think it’s a very nice neighbourhood. The location is great: I can get to the centre or the station in five minutes. It’s quite a long way to cycle to Radboud University, though, and a bit of a climb. This neighbourhood is very low lying, but there isn’t much you can do about that.’

‘My Spatial Planning studies has given me a different perspective on the neighbourhood. Rundown houses are interspersed with very beautiful houses where young people live. I also feel that neighbours actually know each other here. It’s true though that the neighbourhood can look really dirty sometimes. There are lots of antisocial people who speed through the streets and dump their rubbish everywhere. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in Oost. Why? Maybe the people who do it don’t feel really connected to the neighbourhood so they don’t care about litter in the street.’

‘And there isn’t as much nuisance as you’d expect. Before I moved to Nijmegen, I lived in Rotterdam-Zuid, in Feijenoord. It was a highly problematic neighbourhood, where criminality was sometimes clearly visible on the street. Still, I lived there happily for two years. At the time I thought: if I can be happy here, I should be able to manage it in the Waterkwartier. The only thing is that my landlord isn’t very nice, but that could happen anywhere.’