Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

As many other cities around the world, Rotterdam has been investing in improving its image to stimulate urban development and to attract visitors, residents and investors. In particular, during the last 15 years the municipality of Rotterdam has intensified its attempts to develop a ‘brand’ that fits the ‘new Rotterdam’, which was gradually rebuilt after destructive bombardments during the Second World War (Riezebos 2014). In 2014 Rotterdam was ranked 8th by ‘Rough Guide’ in the list of ‘Top 10 Cities to See’, whereas the ‘New York Times’ listed Rotterdam in the top 10 of 52 Places to Go. These rankings demonstrate Rotterdam’s success in repositioning itself, using the physical interior of the city as a key element in its branding strategy.

Our quest in this book was to unravel how the city of Rotterdam comes to terms with its superdiverse character. It speaks to the rapidly evolving literature on superdiversity by taking as the central case study a city that may be representative of a much broader range of cities in Europe (and beyond) that seem reluctant in coming to terms with superdiversity, and that are not ranked as global cities. The example of Rotterdam reveals the spectrum of contradictions and paradoxes that come along with this uncomfortable relationship with superdiversity. Rotterdam is both a city of inclusion, the first with a mayor of Moroccan descent, and a city of exclusion, with political discourses in the City Council that are exclusionary and sometimes outright discriminatory. The core question to be addressed in this concluding chapter is why in some cities, like Rotterdam, the transformation into a superdiverse city is more problematic and accompanied by political upheaval, while in other cities it seems to be a more smooth process. The term superdiversity is merely describing a certain reality that characterizes Rotterdam and is not used as a normative term. With this book, we want to contribute to the growing literature that is trying to explain under which conditions a superdiverse city or neighbourhood is perceived by its inhabitants as an overall positive configuration and under which conditions people perceive it as being a more negative phenomenon and it leads to a more negative discourse.

What’s the matter with Rotterdam? This is a question I asked in a 2017 lecture (available to view at ), when trying to figure out how and why the city seems to disrupt common contemporary narratives concerning migration and cities. That is, social scientists since Simmel have postulated that cities are largely incubators of cosmopolitanism, or openness (if only indifference) to socio-cultural differences. It is often presumed that such openness goes together with an acceptance of ethnic diversity and immigration. Opinion polls and ethnographic research in cities usually bears out this presumption. Hence, it comes as surprising if not shocking to learn that in super-diverse Rotterdam – with over 50% of its population stemming from some 180 nations – the urban model of cosmopolitan incubator seems to fail. Authors in this collection have pointed to developments in Rotterdam by way of negative reactions to diversity, substantial voting for rightwing, anti-immigrant parties, and an ‘unhappy version’ of super-diversity in which the growth of a disapproving atmosphere has led to sharper ethnic boundaries, retreat into white enclaves, and low levels of white-ethnic minority social contact. Indeed, what’s the matter with Rotterdam?