Rotterdam, The Netherlands April -June 2024
Emma Yuen (2-4), Zainab Al-Mansour (5), Ilia Aladov (6-7), Claudia Diana (8-9), Leonie Bode (10-11), Sana Rizwan Gondal (12-13), Oishika Basak (14-15), Anna Janssen (16-17), James Crossley (18-19), Nicole MesquitaMendes (20-21), Yidi Wang (22-23)
Amina Daschil, Julia Rozentsvit, Rachel Nelems, Silvia Cantalupi, Suzanne Stam (unquantifiable contribution)
Our 3 months together in Rotterdam have been full of movement. With and without intention, we’ve wandered the city, encountering care, capital and rebellion… control, love and theatre… racism, playfulness and home… surveillance, queerness and community. How have we moved? Through conversation, by bike, through books, by tram, through lectures, by foot. Through each other’s stories and communities, through reflexive critique, heated discussion and loving conversations. Through photos of other times and places, and stories shared by residents of the city. So I have been thinking a lot about movement and difference. Here are some loose thoughts.
Mimi Sheller and John Urry are mobility scholars who argue that movement is an everyday and embodied activity, imbued with meanings and uneven power (1). Movements are intimate and personal, done in the everyday, and they are relational too. They are responsive
to and entangled with other people, living things and the environment around us. Think about a child who avoids running through a field because they are scared of red ants, or of rumoured beast roaming in the grass. Think about apartheid and segregation, how these systems make the movement of certain bodies in certain spaces illegal and deadly, and the movement of certain bodies celebrated and rightful.As we go about our everyday movements - taking the tram to work, stopping for a conversation, meeting family, walking to a sexual health clinic, attending a protest - we are involved in and performing an infinite array of meanings and power structures.
Movements are not simply about getting from A to B. It is habitual, nostalgic, stressful, ‘illegal’, adventurous, dangerous. Running as a way of moving can be connected with fun, personal development, fitness and play. It can also be painful, a reminder of an arduous escape from a home that has been destroyed. Movement can be stressful, where constant
barriers to boarding public transport makes it difficult to relax for someone using a wheelchair. Walking slowly can be a matter of individual calmness and serenity, a quiet way to collect your thoughts or think about nothing at all. Walking slowly, even stopping, can also be an act of defiance, where fast-moving space is forced to stop, becoming a spatial and sonic stage for the repeated voicing of demands and solidarity. You can see these mobile meanings in language too: in Cantonese, you don’t ‘go’ or ‘travel’ to Hong Kong, you ‘return to Hong Kong’ (返香港), a return that is not easy for some, and impossible for others.
Movements do not have different meanings by accident. Writing about the oppression and empowerment of black women and lesbians in the US, Audre Lorde argued for linking personal experiences of discrimination with broad structures of power (2). Similarly, Sara Ahmed argues that ‘racialising’ (and other forms of othering) is done through often banal encounters between people. They are made real by our limbs, by how our eyes wander or roll, by our conversational patience, the speed our legs move, how much space we take up on the pavement (3). Movement then, is done by our bodies, embedded in and performing a towering scaffold of cultural and political systems - racialisation, heteronormativity, able-bodied norm.
I think about the impatience and vitriol my parents are met with when they stop on the pavement checking google maps, where I observe immobile white(r) people being politely walked-around. Or how I used to ask ‘why can’t you be normal?’ when they spoke Chinese in public and passers by stopped moving to hear and react to them. I also think about how I walk with confidence that I don’t always have, on a dark street, into an office space, into a café, with my white partner. I think about how my friend was stopped and written down by police officers for smoking marijuana in public, while his white partner remained completely invisible to the officers.
Mobility then, is limited by or enabled by histories of power, perpetuated or challenged in the present. Non-movement is also a part of this. For example, some people entering Europe move freely into and within the European Union; others face violent borders, at the geographical boundary and/or as everyday moments and relationships. ‘Economic value’ over the human right to a home, protectionism over solidarity. It also finds its home in the European migration milieu ‘that both requires and regulates the migrant’(4). One that is rooted in the normal global condition
of slavery and forced movement of brown, black, asian and stigmatised white bodies, to labour for the extraction of economic value they do not reap themselves. In this same milieu, cultural and ethno-nationalistic protectionism securitises these bodies (5). Read more about how forced movement is met with equal force here: https://jcwi.org.uk/campaigns/climate-justice-is-migrant-justice/.
Thinking about Rotterdam, we spent a lot of time in the area of Bospolder-Tussendijken (BoTu). We hung out at the weekly market, made collective food at the Haus van de Toekomst, spoke to neighbours walking down Mathenesserweg, ate pizza at Kervansaray, drank coffee at Smaak, and drank beers at Café de Oude Sluis. The streets aren’t just thoroughfares, roads and cycle lanes, but part of the interior of a home/neighbourhood. I let out a bubble of breath I didn’t realise I had been holding in. I felt I could walk slowly again, laugh loudly, attend to the plants growing in facade gardens, and ask people about them. So there was a cognitive dissonance between our experience of BoTu and the dominant discourse of it being dangerous or inherently disempowered. This dissonance is not a coincidence, but can be explained as ‘stigmatisation based on a territory narrative’(7), the racialisation of geographical space and its inhabitants (8).
Delfshaven, where BoTu is, has been regularly designated as a ‘hotspot’ for crime, ultimately justifying aggressive stop-and-search policing (7). ‘Loitering’ is a euphemism for criminality, a speech act that turns young men into a security risk. For black and brown men, movement and stillness is closely surveilled and criminalised through disproportionate police presence. Jennifer Long writes that this kind of approach, which conflates certain minority groups with criminality, is a ‘strategy to make non-conforming people more noticeable… more governable’ (7).
This is not to ignore that BoTu is disadvantaged compared to other areas in the city, in the Netherlands - a country celebrating the 10th highest GDP per capita in the world. More to say that disempowerment and disenfranchisement have been produced. Not just by stigmatisation, but by unequal provisioning of infrastructure. Thinking about mobility makes this clear. The transport authority MDRH claims that the types of tram journeys people in BoTu take are not
valuable or cost-efficient, they are too short (9), too frivolous. Hence they have made cuts to both trams 4 & 8, vital transport in the area. This has not happened on the northern end of tram 4, where the neighbourhood is wealthier and deemed ‘inappropriate’ for bus replacement. Take from that what you will. This is unquestioned by many. Perhaps they could reframe:
“State-sanctioned infrastructural abandonment… is coded… as the product of financially irresponsible residents on whom austerity and dispossession can justly be visited” (6).
The power that underpins mobilities is political and cultural, it is infrastructural and personal. Moving and not-moving freely is not a universal experience, though it is enjoyed by some. So we should all concern ourselves with movement in our writing, our activism, our research, our campaigning, our choices for places to meet, our friendships and relationships, our daily behaviours and acts. It is so fundamental to our lives, our human rights, and challenging oppressive systems. We should concern ourselves empathetically and politically with the (im) mobilities of others, on the street, in our cities, trapped within and without states.
References:
1. Sheller and Urry, 2005. The new mobilities paradigm, Environment and Planning A, 38, pp.207-226.
2. Lorde, 2019. “Sister Outsiders”, Penguin Classics.
3. Ahmed, 2004. Collective Feelings: Or, the Impressions Left by Others, Theory, Culture and Society, 21(2), pp.25-42.
4. Hall, 2017, Mooring ‘super-diversity’ to a brutal migration milieu’, Ethical and Radical Studies, 40(9).
5. Tyler, 2021. “Stigma”, Left Book Club.
6. Appel, Anand, Gupta, 2018. “The Promise of Infrastructure”, Duke University Press.
7. Wacquant, 2013. Symbolic Capital and Social Classes, Journal of Classical Sociology 13(2), pp.292-302.
8. Long, 2022. Racialisation of city spaces through moral monitoring in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Lidé města, 24(2), pp.167-196.
9. “Contourenplan toekomstvast tramnet regio Rotterdam”, download at: https://mrdh.nl/, p.15.
As an outsider of Rotterdam, it is hard not to witness the structure of the city from the first time visit. The mix feelings I got while wandering the city, from serenity in Hoogvliet-Zuid, to the loss of identity in Rotterdam Centrum, to the connectedness in Delfshaven, to displacement in Nieuw-Mathenesse, where I observed the Ukrainian refugee ship, to disconnection in Zuidplein. All of this made me think of what makes Rotterdam a city as a whole. And could this city (The city of Make it Happen) sustain the historical changes that had been through and continue? All those questions have been playing at the back of my mind while exploring the city and learning more about it through the first block of the course.
What I had realized is Rotterdam[mers] believe[s] that urgent and drastic change is necessary to keep the wheel moving forward. And that only can happen through the power of communities and their resilience.
Community Resilience is about community having the ability to respond to withstand and recover from adverse situations. Adverse situations might include hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, health pandemics, societal or economic collapse. And for a community to respond to and recover from such disasters certain fundamental things must be in place: such as - capacity for self-organizing, social connectedness, empowerment, the understanding of risks and uncertainty, and effective communication.
As an outsider, who happen to work with communities in Cape Town (SA), Passaic (NJ,SA), and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia –Rotterdammers are not much of a difference! The initiatives we saw and visit are the fundamental of what make the city connected and robust, not the urban fabric of the city or the morphology. The values that are within each group, the culture and customs they bring is what make Rotterdam unique and set it differently from the rest of the cities.
I guess, as I started to discover the areas within Rotterdam, all the answers came into one piece. It is not an obvious layer to witness. One needs to peel many layers to understand Rotterdam and understand the true value of it. This city just grows within you!
D.T. had been a seller at the floor store for nearly two decades. At fifty, with grey hair just beginning to frame his temples, he had seen the neighborhood transform in ways both subtle and profound. Yesterday’s rain had left the streets slick and reflective, but today a timid sun peeked through the clouds, casting a warm glow on the wet asphalt.
As he sorted through the morning mail, a yellow colored leaflet caught his eye. It announced a community initiative: neighbors would come together to construct a platform, cook together at the open kitchen, sharing meals on the platform and sign a petition to bring back the tram line that had been recently canceled. D.T. had relied on that tram for years, but he doubted the power of petitions and public performances to effect real change. Still, the idea of the open kitchen intrigued him.
The neighbourhood served as a home to diverse population bringing together different cuisines.
The workshop where “het perron” would be built was directly across from his store. Throughout the week, D.T. found himself glancing out the window more often than usual,observing the process.
Midweek, a few of the platform builders entered his store, searching for some wooden blocks.
D.T. was happy to help and found himself drawn into conversation. He shared his skepticism, expressing a resigned acceptance of the tram’s absence. “People can get used to anything,” he said. “It’s sad, but life goes on.”
Despite his doubts, the builders’ enthusiasm was infectious. They spoke passionately about their vision, and their optimism, highlighting that this event united various local initiatives. He promised he would stop by to sign the petition. By the end of the week, the project had grown beyond his expectations. Every day, more neighbors joined in, offering assistance and supplies. The platform of exactly the length of one tram section took shape, a physical manifestation of collective effort and hope.
On Sunday, as the platform neared completion, D.T. decided to participate fully.
That evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, the platform stood as a testament to what the neighborhood could achieve together.
CYCLE POWERED
STAGE
COMMUNITY SPACE
VEGETABLE GARDEN
Claudia Diana
You can find the game board and the cards in the middle of this zine.
Choose a character and accompany them on a quest to reach their destination.
Take with you the cards associated with your person, they will indicate the way and the obstacles or advantages you will find on the way.
Each pawn is placed in the centre and moves towards its destination, at the 4 corners of the board.
Be creative and use whatever small object you have on hand as a game piece. If you do not have a dice you may create one with a pencil as the drawing below suggests.
Throw a dice to choose who begins first and proceed clockwise. Each person gets one throw to move their game piece of as many steps as the dice indicates.
Whenever you land on text box check the story of your character on the cards to understand your next move.
When you land on a double box you can take it as a shortcut.
haveImprovisewithwhateveryou Didonhandforgamepieces.transformyouknowyoucanapencilintoadice?
a senior resident of Botu, needs to visit their doctor’s office today. Before they head there, they will encounter some sidequests: helping a local artist by collecting plastic bags left around the Visserijplein from the market, and enjoying a delicious soup at the Huis van de Toekomst, which will give them the energy to refocus on their main quest. They will also have to adapt to the recent removal of the direct tram line that used to take them straight to their doctor’s office. Instead, they will need to call the free PlusBus service, sacrificing the independence of public transport and enduring a longer wait for their ride to their destination.
a cook who volunteers at Wmo Radar, is preparing a special meal this evening for the women of the association. She begins by collecting ingredients, starting with a visit to her allotment garden at Volkstuinvereniging Streven naar Verbetering. After a delay caused by a rain shower she heads to the greenhouses to pick up fresh produce. During her quest, she discovers she is allergic to a specific type of cress pollen and has to pause to visit the emergency room. Despite this setback, will she ultimately reach Wmo Radar in time to start cooking for the community dinner?
an art student and squatter, ventures to the outskirts of Rotterdam to scout the perfect spot for his upcoming harbour-side rave. Along the way, he stops to deliver tools and food to his comrades at the student encampment. Inspired by their cause, he delays his journey to participate in discussions and spend time with them.
At the harbour, Wim climbs a coal hill to survey the area, but he’s caught by vigilant guards and asked to leave the area. Wim hops onto a self-driving cargo track, giving him a new opportunity to continue his journey. The cargo takes him to an interesting concrete structure by the beach, can this be the place he was looking for?
is secretly learning Turkish to surprise her partner and their family. Every week, she practises at the Taal Café. Today, she starts her journey with the advantage of having her car parked in her private spot, allowing for a quick start. However, as she drives past the floating farm, she notices that one of the cows has fallen into the water. Without hesitation, she leaves her car to join the rescue team, delaying her journey but luckily saving the cow. Continuing on foot, Dewi encounters a large park that separates the M4H area from Botu, she must walk all the way around it. Despite these setbacks, she is one step closer to her destination. Will Dewi arrive at the Taal Café on time to practice her Turkish?
Leonie Bode
It is obvious that the paradigm shift we dream of must come from us, and from the ground up. It is obvious, and yet, it is the perpetual struggle in planning praxis and organising dynamics. Planning and organising must go hand in hand, like two friends in a symbiotic relationship of care, a kind of commensalism that results in a more equitable city. This cannot be taken as idealistic, even if it is in technical terms, a talk of the ideal. This relationship must be taken seriously because it is an answer to serious problems and the tool for serious results.
Take the Wijkraad in Bospolder-Tussendijken, currently organising themselves on the neighbourhood level to resist the stopping of Trams 8 and 4 in their district. Had they not prepared a campaign to reverse the decision by the Metropoolregio, the Tram 8 route through the neighbourhood would have not been restored and the residents would have been effectively cut off from the centre of the city - which would then be reinforced as a centre for capital that simply centres around the movement of capital, in turn restricting that movement to the centre. People who live in areas such as the BoTu are not then what the Gementee of Rotterdam would ever prioritise, even if they make the city of Rotterdam work, and even if without them, it is a centre that cannot hold.
1.
Interestingly, the importance of the neighbourhood level is something the Gemeente claims to understand and has promised to empower (Wijk aan Zet). This brings to light certain reminders and questions. One question is of the efficacy of the municipal structure and another is about the strength of good political will when there is a conflict between capital and the community. Some more questions are regarding the intentions of the municipality;
does it really desire the heightened status of the neighbourhood and its council or is this a paltry PR gesture, kind of like the D&I committee in an institute that holds no real authority and is not designed to? Another question, which is in turn a reminder, is about what it means for something or someone to be empowered. When it comes to such matters, power can be shared, but it cannot be given. To empower in this form is to claim that it is the Gemeente who can give power to the Wijkraad, and perhaps one will concede that in terms of forming structures, of course it must be done this way. But what is apparent instead is that unless the Wijkraad finds their own power, they will have no power. Power then, is the Wijkraad’s to claim, and their task to ensure it is taken. The reversal here is important to demonstrate clearly where power lies, for power is also in the framing and the narrative. Power, rights, dignity - these are simply not given. They are taken.
I see this, of course, in a larger understanding of how power works. There is a chant that comes from feminists in South Asia, one that has now transcended to encompass all forms of injustice. Over the years, I have led this chant and I have answered it. Without fail, it reminds me where power comes from: “Aray tum kia do ge azaadi? Hum chheen ke len ge azaadi.” “What freedom will you give us? We will (forcefully) take our freedom.” Power comes from people themselves. It is a mistake to think liberation, justice, or power can be given. That is a narrative of oppression, and one that seeks to clear the conscience of oppressors. Colonial entities do not give power or liberate the natives, the natives claim their power and their liberation. What power can oppressors give? Their oppression is their power. Liberation is then the realisation of the oppressed’s power.
This may seem a dramatic escalation of the context when referring to the local government of Rotterdam, and I sympathise with you if you are alarmed. I will pause to laugh with you too. We must be cautious of simple narratives taken for granted. The Gemeente and Wijkraad are not at inherent odds with each other, and this is not an oppressed vs oppressor story involving race and colonialism and powerful suits who when push comes to shove, are simply out to protect their own self interests. Right? The
BoTu is not a demography of largely migrants and people of colour who have faced systemic oppression or institutional barriers to growth in their lives, and the threat of transport poverty is not one that enables a degenerative growth spiral for such a demographic, one exacerbated by a far right government in power that ensures it power because of a narrative of fear it bases on exactly these “others”. Let’s definitely keep the scale of the context in mind and be cautious of simple narratives, like those of cost cutting measures for efficiency or poor communities that are responsible for their own problems.
I met a stadplanner responsible for much of the development plans for the M4H, and I asked them how the local community felt about their plans and if they had been involved as participants in the process. They answered that the community were not planning experts or architects or economists, so they were not consulted. This is the praxis of planners and urban planning I have mostly come across in Rotterdam in my limited time in the city. If I spend some more time, I wonder if I would find that this is a minority, or the majority. I fear the latter.
The ideal is then in question, not so that it can be questioned for its practicality or possibility, but so that we can question how to make it practical and possible. It would be impractical otherwise. There are inherent clashes of interest in urban planning and municipal governing, and these ready narratives are often taken as a salve to absolve ourselves for irresponsible planning and governing. That practice must be abolished.
The relationship of organising and planning must be strengthened instead, so that the channel is cleared from the debris of top down planing damage. When communities organise, systems that were designed to exclude them suddenly find room for inclusion and officials who seemed too busy to cater to their needs suddenly understand resolving their concerns a priority. When planners and governing authorities deal in good faith with the communities they serve and represent, they find that their plans and policies actually work better and are effective in the most unplanned ways.
Tram 4 is no longer running in BoTu. Decisions were made without consulting the community and enforced despite community pushback. For now, it stands that the Gemeente have abandoned the neighbourhood of BoTu and the Metropoolregio has prioritised car centric planning. The Wijkraad is organising to reverse this decision and are fighting for their neighbourhood, along with members of that neighbourhood. While it is not clear which way the final outcome will go, it is clear that what the neighbourhood wants will not be given to them. They have to take it themselves. There is work to be done, and paradigms to shift.
References Images:
1. https://myprivacy.dpgmedia.nl/consent?siteKey=V9f6VUvlHxq9wKIN&callbackUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. ad.nl%2Fprivacy-gate%2Faccept-tcf2%3FredirectUri%3D%252Frotterdam%252Fjudith-84-op-de-barricaden-voor-rollatorprotest-tegen-schrappen-tramlijnen~a1f7d7e0b%252F
2. https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/pakistans-aurat-march-and-its-unrelenting-feminists/
3. https://petities.nl/petitions/tram-8-en-4-hou-ze-hier
On a Saturday afternoon, With four empty cloth bags, A lot of 10, 20, 50-cent coins in my wallet, Wearing comfortable clothing and my hair up in a bun, I head out for an adventure, maybe a mission.
A short metro ride later, As I approach my destination, A stark fishy smell overcomes me. I hear the buzz of people talking, Interspersed with some loud jolting screams: “Een Euro Bakje!” “Drie voor Een!”
Despite having a very detailed grocery list, I find myself distracted, confused and overwhelmed, Dare I say, attracted to the best of deals, There is a steady urge to buy things I do not need, Or in quantities, I cannot consume.
I make my way through the rush of people: The casual bumping into each other The dirty, vegetable-waste-strewn floor, -All strange occurrences in the orderly West –
The state of chaos, of ruckus, of disorder, So different from the smooth, orderly, and shiny Urban landscape of the Global North.
I wonder how this commotion has been given a right to the city, In a city seemingly avoidant of aberrations and disruptions.
I am mesmerised by the absurdity: Of the hyper-modern glass façade of the Markthal, Standing tall in front of the makeshift stalls of the Binnenrotte Markt, A face-off between the polished and the improvised.
The density, the noise, the vendors calling out, The wide variety of tropical fruits and vegetables, Remind me of my home, Kolkata, Thousands of kilometres away.
Through this feeling of profound nostalgia, I recognise how diverse the products being sold are: Diverse in origin.
Diverse in clientele.
A stark difference from the bazaars in Kolkata, Where everything is still very local Seasonality, still very prevalent.
As I conclude my grocery shopping, Balancing two full bags on each shoulder.
I wonder if the vendors and other visitors have ever felt the same way: Finding a sense of comfort, And yearning for their hometowns In different corners of the world.
Anna Janssen
Living in the Zwart Janstraat in Rotterdam, it’s impossible not to notice how busy the street is. And especially during the warmer months of the year, the dozens of cars and motors racing through the street are a given. These vehicles not only cause severe noise pollution, they also endanger pedestrians and cyclists. Only yesterday I witnessed a car taking a turn into a sidestreet, and almost running over a little child on a bike. Luckily everything went well, but it did make me think. At first, I had planned to write about making this street more accessible for groups such as disabled people and/or neurodivergent people, but witnessing a scene like this combined with my own experience, I thought it would be better to first focus on making this street more accessible for everyone.
So, the main problem that causes annoyance and trouble are the tons of cars and motors entering the Zwart Jan, especially the ones driving too fast, making loud noises with their engines and showing reckless behaviour. Two years ago, the street went from being a two-way street to becoming a one-way street. Inhabitants of the street mention it becoming much safer ever since. This is good, but there is still improvement needed.
The easiest solution would just be to ban vehicles altogether from the street and make it a pedestrian-focused shopping street. This, however, will at this moment not be possible. The Zwart Jan houses tons of Islamic shops. Several of the items sold in these shops are not easily available somewhere else. People from the whole country, and even other European countries, travel to the Zwart Janstraat to buy their items there. Shopowners thus fear that if the street would become car free, less customers would come to their stores.
Living in the Zwart Janstraat I also notice the humongous amount of day visitors. During the night, almost all parking spots are completely empty. This means that the street doesn’t have to offer parking spaces to almost any of the residents. That is why I came up with the following plan to slow down the traffic on the Zwart Jan, without trying to impact the daily shop activities of the many visitors.
Firstly, to minimise the traffic on the Zwart Janstraat, I’d like to change the direction of the only sidestreet of the Zwart Jan that is still leading traffic onto the street, instead of away. By doing so, there is only one entrance to the street for vehicles and the “stream” of cars will
thus be more controlled. Secondly, I would put a pedestrian crossing before every sidestreet. This will signal drivers of the mindlessly crossing pedestrians in the street.
Lastly, to slow down the vehicles even more, I propose to extend the sidewalk at certain places. This would be done in a round shape so that the street would get a river-like feeling. There would be an automatic, slower flow. On top of that, speeding is not possible anymore due to this shape.
The round extensions would be placed at least before every sidestreet. By doing so, the driver is forced to take a larger turn. This results in them having to slow down more, have a bigger overview and have more time to look at their surroundings. The temptation of quickly taking a short turn is taken away by this intervention.
Some parking spaces will be lost to the extended sidewalk, but since most visitors are only there for the shops and thus for a short amount of time, this should be able to naturally solve
itself. And with the newly acclaimed sidewalk, more recreational places for pedestrians can be created. Think, for example, about green places. Something the Zwart Janstraat can definitely use more of.
Altogether, the interventions of adding pedestrian crossings, having all sidestreets lead away from the Zwart Janstraat and the extended sidewalk to slow down traffic, should result in a safer and more welcoming street. A street where people feel happy and safe to do their shopping without having to worry about the danger of vehicles.
An outsider, urbanist, white man, idealist, comfortable, typical, is sent on research assignment to a street in a low income, high migrant background area. Here the tram line is going to be cut due (according to the municipality) to the road width not safely accommodating all three modes of transport: tram, car, and bicycle. A little research shows that the decision may be more connected to regional austerity measures than safety, but given the official reason, the man may think:
“But why not lose the cars instead”? Why not. And yet.
Could he consider the historical and political meaning of the car in this city? Underdog city of the Netherlands with something to prove. Bombed in Europe’s war against Naziism, with streets widened by new designs signed off under that occupation and collaboration?
Surely he wouldn’t forget that public space is not safe space for all, and the perceived safety of existing in the city (let alone riding a bike) does not necessarily extend to Black, brown, female, old, young, differently abled, marginalised bodies? That a space like a park doesn’t hold the familiarity or security of your cousin’s friend’s faded red 2007 Opel Corsa?
Might he remember that while he doesn’t need the status symbol of a car to prove his worth (white faces shine easily even through mirrored windscreens), not everyone has the luxury of having nothing to prove.
You’d think that he could extrapolate the idea of the cancelled tram with many other injustices levelled at lower income, racialised communities. How in a system in which this kind of cancellation is the norm; individuals and groups lean inwards, rather than towards state preservation. It’s harder to be denied entry when you own sovereign space of the drivers seat.
Maybe seeing those peddling by would realign his perception of who the bicycle is for. A symbol of the Netherlands, ethnically Dutch, ethnically othering, in an ethnically superdiverse neighbourhood. If your nationality is grudging and begrudged, how do you hold onto what is you when riding a bike that your parents never rode, and your friends don’t ride, in your part of town that doesn’t even have safe infrastructure.
How might that man internalise the fact that while cycling makes sense in so many ways, there are many things in this world that don’t make sense. In fact they absolutely must not make sense; because to make sense of them would be to excuse them. To accept them. To normalise them.
When that man, and others like him, look at a low income community with boy racers, single occupancy, single mums, dirty diesel engines, rear-windscreen stickers, muffler-less exhaust pipes, honking wedding processions; he must look with uncommon sense, not one of the big five. A lens focusing on centuries of oppression in one direction, and corresponding decades of extraction in another, facilitating the building of fast shiny things that have enabled the gleaming sleek age of white people driving about in cars, uncriticised, gleeful. Until the point at which, once those with the means had really eked out every iota of joy (exclaimed in toxic particulate form), that privileged group felt ready to say:
“It’s just not okay anymore”
“You know?”
“Like we’re trying to save the planet here”
“Cars are an unjust use of space”
“Riding a bike is good for you”
“You just need to reject the capitalist paradigms of ownership and speed”
“Oh yes that’s my Vanmoof”
“Yah daddy finally sold the Volvo”
“There’s just such good deals on second hand electrics these days”
Demonisation of the car.
Not a consensus decision.
So to the outsider who says “why not”, and subsequently remembers that there might be a deeper, wider, issue underlying the surface you’re looking at. Cutting the tram is a safety issue, but the one you might have thought.
Nicole Mesquita-Mendes
We are who we are. They are who they are. But everyone is human, and that must mean something.
Yidi Wang
In Rotterdam, during the lesson of This is Tomorrow, I lived in the south of the city, in a rather smaller room with no furniture inside. Only a mirror and the outside overgrown greenery expand my mind further than the spatiality. I felt like a marine creature consumes less tangible materials that have any complete shape. Only electricity and water were consumed shapelessly, though being measured by price, and number, both quantities.
Following my personal footprints in Europe in the past year, from Paris to Cyprus, and then Rotterdam, I was always attracted by waterbody (ocean or river), and oysters out of a visceral understanding, although seldom physically touch either of them, nor consume. Conceptually I somehow managed to merge these metaphors into the topics that the scholars in this programme introduced to us, energy transition, port infrastructure, commons, etc. Even beyond the class, my further research led me to planetary thinking and digital democratic possibilities. In my mind, there should always be a future. So I decided to go back to Beijing to delve deep into this form of digital governing in the Chinese context of complexity, which is understandable and viscerally close to me.
THIS STARTS FROM THE NOVEL I BOUGHT SEVERAL MONTHS AGO CALLED IN ASCENSION, WHICH IS ABOUT A YOUNG SCIENTIST’S WORK ON A SHIP, AND IN AMERICA. THE CHARACTER IS FROM ROTTERDAM. SHE IS CONSTANTLY DISTRACTED FROM THE IDEA OF GOING BACK TO ROTTERDAM.
SONIC INFRASTRUCTURE, A SONIC ENERGY GENERATOR, AND A DIGITAL AMPLIFIER SYSTEM THAT HAS A DIGITAL OYSTER’S INNER FORM TO INFORM ROUTES, AND POSSIBILITIES OF TRANSITIONING IN MULTIPLE MANAGEABLE SPEED AND DIMENSIONS.
PARTIALLY SHOWN IN 2024 IABR, NIEUWE INSTITUUT.
Throughout our 3 months together in Rotterdam, we have been asked to research and work on various projects related to the city, its inhabitants, initiatives and institutions. In various ways, we have become its inhabitants, its observers, its participants. All throughout our work, coming up with an urban strategy ‘for’ Zuidplein, making a film about tactics for survival in the city, posters on climate crisis for the Nieuwe Instituut, we kept coming back to the same couple of questions:
Who are we? What do we know? Should we intervene?
How can we hope to understand enough about a neighbourhood, a community and city with so little time?
Trying to understand the issues of the Right to the City, ‘anthropocene’ and ‘superdiversity’ (the three organisational blocs of the course) has taken us from Rotterdam, to the European Union, to oyster shells, to the atmosphere, to our personal lives, to global supply chains, to ‘home’, to anxieties, and to fear. Unchained from space, the city has no real end, no real beginning. Only what people do, what they experience, why, and how they experience it. Design processes and architectural firms, contradictions, unevenness, and tiny insect worlds. Sketching, filming, fighting, and witnessing injustice, the subversive, the loud, the silenced, and community initiatives. How history cannot be decoupled from the ‘urban’, how beauty and joy may be found in the pavement, how internet cables cross the border of city and country.
So as both outsiders and insiders, looking into and out of the city and its minutiae, questioning who decides out and in and the future, looking outwards to broader structures, industries and disciplines, our works, enclosed in this zine, are outside-in urbanisms:
Reflections on Mobility: personal essay on movement and its discontents, Rotterdamers are the Rulerdammers: Rotterdam’s community character, Het Perron: trams, hope and re-enfranchisement, Rotterdam Encounters: board game of Rotterdam encounters, A change in perspective through a city unknown: Rotterdam photo series, Paradigm Shift: essay on ‘idealism’, power, paradigm shift, Four bags of groceries and a heart full of nostalgia: poem on the market as home, Making the Zwart Janstraat more accessible: redesigning street to improve safety and comfort, Reductive: reflexive poem on colonization and cars, Care, Connection, Humanity: photo-essay on care, A note on oyster, sonic energy, and transitional digital infrastructure: an auto-ethnographic, analytical drift with Oyster.
