I lived in Rotterdam for several years at the beginning of the 2000s. At that time, I knew the city as a resident rather than as a researcher. I walked and cycled through it, used public transport, went shopping, met friends and gradually became familiar with its different parts through everyday routines. I knew Rotterdam less through its major projects than through the way a city becomes familiar when you live there: through routes, shops, streets, neighbourhoods and the small decisions that make up ordinary life. When I returned this summer, almost twenty years later, I was therefore not returning to observe projects that I had watched develop. I was encountering a city in which many things were completely new to me, while still carrying a strong memory of the Rotterdam I had known before they existed.
The Luchtsingel was one of the clearest examples. It had not existed when I lived in Rotterdam, and when I encountered it on my return I immediately found the idea appealing. The elevated pedestrian connection introduced a new route through the city with a surprisingly modest physical intervention. Rather than relying on a complete redevelopment, it demonstrated how a bridge, stairs and connected public spaces could alter movement and make previously less connected areas feel closer. Its development through ZUS, civic participation and crowdfunding also fitted with an image of Rotterdam as a city willing to experiment with relatively small interventions. I liked this aspect of it precisely because it suggested that urban change did not always have to mean rebuilding an entire neighbourhood.
What surprised me was discovering that the Luchtsingel had already disappeared. The wooden structure had deteriorated and was closed for safety reasons. This changed my perception of the project. I had first encountered it as an example of urban innovation in the literature, but was now confronted with the problem that comes afterwards: what happens when an experimental intervention stops to function? Innovation is relatively easy to celebrate when something is new; maintenance is much less visible. The encounter also made me think about the difference between the official story of an urban project and the people who simply inhabit its spaces. I encountered a homeless man there who was rather defensive. I did not know his circumstances, but his presence made me conscious that I was looking at the site as an urban intervention while he was experiencing it simply as part of his immediate environment. The bridge did not have to be an innovation for him. It was a place in the city. That small encounter stayed with me because it brought the question of urban value back to everyday use. A project can be temporary and still have mattered, but its social meaning cannot be separated entirely from the question of who actually uses it and what happens when its physical structure no longer exists.
At Benthemplein, another space that did not exist when I lived in Rotterdam, I again found myself more interested in everyday use than in the formal ambition of the project. The square was designed to combine public recreation with water management, collecting rainwater during heavy rainfall while functioning as a public space under normal conditions. When I visited, however, what caught my attention was simply seeing children sitting around hanging out and talking. It was a small observation, but it seemed to capture something important about public space. The square had been conceived through a sophisticated combination of climate adaptation, landscape and recreation, yet the children did not need to perform its intended functions for the space to become useful to them. They were simply spending time there. For me, this is precisely where children’s relationship with the city becomes interesting. Children do not necessarily distinguish between a space designed for a particular purpose and a space that happens to offer somewhere to sit, meet friends or wait. A successful public space may therefore be one that permits uses beyond the program imagined by its designers. This also makes children’s everyday presence a useful way of looking at urban design: rather than asking only whether a space provides facilities for children, we can ask whether ordinary public spaces allow children enough freedom to appropriate them.
The Rotte river offered a different kind of contrast with the Rotterdam I remembered. When I lived there, the water was an unmistakable part of the city, but I experienced it primarily as part of Rotterdam’s port landscape and infrastructure. It was there, constantly visible, but recreational use was much less prominent in my everyday experience. Returning, I was struck by the possibility of entering this urban water environment in a completely different way. At RiF010, beside the Markthal, I watched a group of young women taking a surfing class. What interested me was not only the novelty of surfing in central Rotterdam, but the transformation in what the water could mean within the city. Something I had remembered mainly as part of a working waterfront had acquired another use and another social meaning. At the same time, the trainer who volunteered his time, reminded me that such changes are not produced by physical infrastructure alone. A new facility can make an activity possible, but people, skills and commitment are what turn that possibility into an actual social practice. The river had not simply been redesigned; a different relationship with it had become possible.
The Markthal just next to it, brought me back to the question of the everyday market. It too was new to me because it did not exist when I lived in Rotterdam, just the local market infront of it to which I went every saturday to get fresh sardines and cheese. Architecturally, I found the new Martkhal striking, but what interested me more was the relationship between the new market hall and the older idea of the market as an ordinary part of local life. The outdoor Blaak market still provided the experience of a conventional everyday market: people buying food, comparing prices, carrying shopping bags and coming because they needed something rather than because the market itself was a destination. Inside the Markthal, the atmosphere was different. It was certainly lively and full of food, but it had also become a place to visit, eat, look around and experience Rotterdam. The distinction is subtle because a market can be both local and attractive to visitors, but it made me wonder what happens when an everyday market becomes an urban destination.
Talking to a local Surinamese shop owner who told me that they had to move because of rising rents made this question more tangible. I was reminded that what appears from outside as successful urban change can have very different consequences for the people already doing business there. Gentrification may indicate that an area has become more desirable, but for a small shop they can also mean that remaining is no longer economically possible. This does not make the Markthal simply a negative story about displacement, nor does it mean that everything inside is somehow less local. Rather, it illustrates how difficult it is to define localness. A market is local not only because local products as a broodje baukeljauw or stroopwafles are sold there or because independent businesses operate within it, but because it forms part of people’s ordinary routines and remains accessible enough for those routines to continue.
Returning to Rotterdam therefore made me think less about whether its new urban projects were good or bad than about the kinds of everyday relationships they produce. The Luchtsingel made me think about the afterlife of experimental infrastructure; Benthemplein about the capacity of public space to accommodate children’s own uses; the river about how an existing but relatively underused urban resource can acquire new recreational meaning; and the Markthal about what happens when an everyday market becomes part of the city’s image as well as its everyday economy. None of these places existed for me when I lived in Rotterdam, which is precisely what made the return so revealing. I was not watching the city change in front of me. I was suddenly confronted with the results of changes that had happened in my absence.
There are many more notes and memories from this summer that I have not yet made sense of, and perhaps that is where this series should continue, rather than forcing the return into a neat conclusion. For now, a few ideas keep coming back to me: Dutch cityscapes and the ways in which food, water, creative practices and everything in between shape everyday life. Rotterdam has its contradictions, but it also does many things right, often by making space for experimentation while keeping the city open to ordinary uses and new forms of urban life.