Reform and democracy in the Rotterdam region

Abstract

The city of Rotterdam, with over 600,000 inhabitants, is the second largest in the Netherlands. It has quite a reputation to keep in Dutch public administration of being a frontrunner in the renewal of government and governance. At an earlier stage than the Dutch capital Amsterdam, it divided itself into sub-municipalities, decentralising policy-making responsibilities to directly elected area councils called ‘deelgemeenten’. Rotterdam was the first municipality to discover the advantages of citizen involvement in the regeneration of deprived areas when it invented the so-called ‘social renewal’.1 It has frequently had an ambitious political elite, whose performance has led to grand projects of city regeneration, transforming it into a small Manhattan, for example, after the destruction of the city centre during the bombardment of World War II.

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