Rotterdam: Partnership and Community

Abstract

This chapter shows how the policies for social renewal and local economic development in Rotterdam support restrained political competition through public-private partnerships organising local interests to support growth-oriented policies under changing market conditions that require the city to attract corporate investment. The chapter, based on research carried out between early 1996 and the end of 1997, views the Kop van Zuid Project and the Major Cities Policy (GSB). The Kop van Zuid Project aims to boost Rotterdam’s international standing by attracting major corporations to the city while the Major Cities Policy targets run-down neighbourhoods and ethnic minorities. The GSB policy concentrates on community safety, quality of life, and education and employment. The city council has acknowledged serious urban problems concentrated in the older city districts along the river Maas where high unemployment persists despite the impressive growth of the city’s central business district. The danger of what the city development corporation described as ‘a divided city’ (OBR, 1994, p. 5) will remain if social conditions in deprived communities are allowed to deteriorate. ‘Social renewal’ thus compliments economic development, forming a broad socioeconomic intervention at the local level integrating community groups into the development process.