Don’t Support Nazi-Inspired Apartheid: Tourists Boycott Rotterdam!
Last week [October 2015], Rotterdam was ranked at number 5 in the Lonely Planet list of best cities to visit. This follows similar recent announcements from the Rough Guide and New York Times.
Now, I live here and I just want to say PLEASE DON’T COME. Rotterdam’s already much much worse than it used to be and if it becomes any more of a fucking tourist attraction then it’s game over for the Maasstad. That would be a shame, since Rotterdam used to be a nice city, with lots of squats, some cool bars, excellent festivals and lots of local initiatives going on. Of course, I’m not dealing in specifics here in case they might make you want to come visit.
In the 1990s, the city council decided upon a policy to build up the city on the ‘strong shoulders’ of the rich, instead of concentrating on the wonderful multicultural mix of people living here already. What has happened is that whole areas have been forcibly regenerated from above. Now perhaps this has had some advantages, but it’s always interesting to notice who benefits. Certainly the yuppies who live in the glassy flats that have been puked up all over the centre are enjoying themselves and then the culture of the city has of course adjusted to this new vapid hipster class.
I don’t want Rotterdam to be the next Berlin.
Gentrification is the displacement of working class people by successive waves of richer people. Gentrification is not making the city ‘beautiful’ through art projects, it’s not the “restoration of dilapidated buildings” as i read in a phd recently, it’s not as easy as just saying that it improves areas, although that might also happen. But somehow the focus is always on the amazing opportunities of a fabulous upcoming new area, rather than on the people who used to live there and got displaced.
Gentrification is a cycle of urban renewal and it can’t be stopped or reversed. But regeneration could be done responsibly and with awareness, listening to the needs of the local community. Yet it never seems to work out like that in practice and communities end up being ripped apart. What has happened in Rotterdam is that a form of state-sanctioned apartheid has been imposed, whereby rich white people return to the city and live alongside, but blind to and ignorant of, the people who already live there. Who are the people already there? Well, an interesting cross-section of minority groups, which naturally includes poor white Rotterdammers as well as immigrants from all over the world. Almost 50% of Rotterdammers were born outside the Netherlands or have at least one foreign parent.
My worry is that Rotterdam will become trendy like Berlin, which will screw up the city something chronic.
But maybe I can persuade you not to come to Rotterdam simply by examining what puts it is on the list. In the AD newspaper, some idiot actor called Jan Kooijman states that Rotterdam is great because of the Markthal and the Central Station, Katendrecht and Witte de Withstraat, Urban Espresso Bar, Scapino Ballet, Conny Janssen Danst, Luxor and Schouwburg and Koopgoot.
Let’s take these one by one (nice that he mentioned Koopgoot last) and maybe I can persuade you to go somewhere else instead…
I don’t want it to the next anything.
The Markthal is a hideous, bad FengShui monstrosity. The square it sits wonkily beside hosts the biggest food market in Rotterdam twice a week as well as flea markets and so on. For some reason it seemed like a good idea to those in power to build an indoor market next to the actual market and stick yuppy flats on top. I’ve never been to the Markthal and I’m really pleased someone already tried to burn it down (unfortunately he got caught). It hosts olive counters for yuppies, an Albert Heijn supermarket, a bloody Jamie Oliver restaurant and other multinational projects. I rather support the original market thanks. No foto supplied… And then I found a photo which says it all.
Central Station. Well um yes the main train station has been redesigned and rebuilt over ten years. If you wanted to visit a city because it has a new train station, well then you should probably fuck off and die. My only other comment: Where are the solar panels they said would be put on top?
[Update — Now I wrote something about the station’s nickname]
Katendrecht. I’ve got an excellent quote about Katendrecht which I’ve been itching to use somewhere. Here you go:
After Kop van Zuid, we went on to explore Katendrecht. This area, which
was up to recently a no-go zone with many abandoned warehouses and
almost exclusively working class inhabitants, has over the last decade
transformed into a much more upscale area, with new shops, new squares
and especially a new type of inhabitant popping up on the streets.
Now if you think that sort of attitude is OK and not describing a process of social cleansing, well what can I do? You should probably come to Rotterdam and hang out with other twangers at …. the Urban Espresso Bar. I mean what the fuck, everyone has the right to the city, not just the rich. Katendrecht is the nexus of the Berlinification of Rotterdam, be warned.
Moving on, Witte de Withstraat (WdW) is actually fun street, revitalised from the 1980s onwards. Aha! I hear you say, so some gentrification is OK?! Well no, it’s more complicated than that. I didn’t see the old street in its sleazy rundown state, that was before my time but also I don’t hear people complaining now, since it’s about how the street has changed. Change can’t be stopped, but what is important is how it occurs. For example, one of my old favourite bars, de Schouw, is currently celebrating its 75th birthday. Back in the day it was a journalist hangout, when WdW was the Fleet Street of Rotterdam. As soon as de Schouw gets turned into a hipster cereal cafe, then you’ll hear me complaining.
Nowadays, WdW has a lot of galleries and restaurants, plus WORM which is a funky alternative venue, in fact the street is just a victim of its own success and now it gets way too crowded at weekends. Probably thanks to the people who believed the Lonely Planet when it said in 2009 that the Witte Aap was the best bar in the world. Old faves like the Schouw are pretty terrible now. That’s just what happens. Maybe you like drinking on the streets in a massive crush of people but that seems like hell to me. I rather go to my local bar and have a quiet drink. Or even stay in!
Scapino Ballet and Conny Janssen Danst, hmm dance companies, maybe you could simply see them on tour in your own city.
Luxor is a crap theatre, Schouwburg is an ok theatre. Yet would you really travel to see a theatre?
Ah finally we come to the Koopgoot, thanks to good old Jan Kooijman for mentioning that. I would honestly never have thought of it. I avoid the no-go consumerist area of the centre like the plague. It’s a simply terrible shopping ghetto, you don’t need to come here since thanks to multinational corporations you’ve got pretty much the same shops in your local concrete mall, anywhere in the world!
Rotterdam football supporters enthusiastically trashed the Koopgoot in 1999 when they won the Championship. (What would have happened if they lost???) Unfortunately fotos of this are not to be found on the internets, believe me I have searched. The fun ended when the cops shot three fans. The Mayor said it was a “fantastic neighbourhood party” although to be fair he did say that before the troubles.
Fun fact — the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam,built in the early 1950s, was the model for pedestrianised shopping centres all over the world.
So I blame the Nazis. I do actually. You see they bombed the shit out of central Rotterdam at the start of WWII. (Fun fact 2: if the Dutch hadn’t surrendered the Utrecht was next).
If you put the last 50 years of architecture in a blender, and spat it out in building-sized chunks across the skyline, you would probably end up with something that looked a bit like Rotterdam (Guardian)
This then created the space and opportunity for crappy architects to make a mess of things and to create the grey concrete city which I love (and you aren’t allowed to visit).
So to bring it back to my original plea, please don’t come to Rotterdam! We’re doing just fine here thanks, please go have wanky conversations whilst drinking expensive coffee someplace else… I hear Barcelona is terribly underrated…
