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Rotterdam Resilience Strategy, Rotterdam

1.1. Introduction

Rotterdam is facing several challenges including climate change and notable urbanization and digitalization, which have not only brought new opportunities but also brought new risks. Since 80% of its urban area is below sea level, water management has always been vital on the resilience agenda in Rotterdam. With the intensification of urbanization processes, permeable areas to manage stormwater drainage are diminishing. At the same time, climate change only adds to the problem, raising the probability of storms and floods and thus forcing the city to rapidly adapt into more resilient actions and strategies.

On May 2016, the city of Rotterdam launched its very first resilience strategy to make the city resilient and ready for the challenges of the 21st century. To reproduce the current framework where Rotterdam is towards resilience, this chapter will briefly look into the 2016 resilient strategy and also have a brief glimpse on the history of the evolution of the urban policies on sustainable adaptations in Rotterdam.

1.2. Context and background

Table 1.1. Introductive summary table of Rotterdam Resilience Strategy

• - The Instrument of Water Assessment (2000)
• - Climate Change Plan (2008)
• - National Spatial Strategy
• - The Rotterdam Climate Adaptation strategy (2013)

The city of Rotterdam is a thriving world port city; it is the second largest Dutch city after the capital Amsterdam and currently has a population of more than 644,688 inhabitants (2020, Statistica website). It is located in the province of South Holland, in a delta region near the North Sea, as Map 1.1 shows. Rotterdam is considered one of the main gateways to overseas trade in Europe and an industrial and technological hub of the Netherlands.

Map 1.1. Location of Rotterdam city

(source: Time map website)

The Netherlands was one of the first countries to commit to the sustainability transition discourse in its public networks. In 2000, the government developed the instrument of Water Assessment for implementation in all spatial plans and spatial decisions relevant to water, sequentially becoming mandatory for zoning plans and project decisions.

However, this first plan embraced water management, but it did not have any integration with other urban complexities. The 2008 plan was complemented with initial measures that addressed climate change and, since then, water management has been incorporated in the National Spatial Strategy. This national strategy contributed to the Rotterdam Climate Initiative (RCI), launched in 2013, which aimed to "reduce CO2 emissions by 50% and to have made the region 100% climate proof by 2025". This made Rotterdam one of the global pioneers in urban climate adaptation.

The city of Rotterdam released its Resilience strategy on April 2016 with a vision towards 2030. The strategy will strive to bring the city onto the next level of climate readiness. In fact, the implementation of this climate adaptation strategy had already started with the 2013 strategy and managed to fulfill a number of the objectives, hence exposing the plan's ability to initiate change.

1.3. Rotterdam Resilience Strategy - Ready for the 21st Century

1.3.1. Methodology

The city formulated a clear methodology to define its resilience strategy and vision. The city's suggestions came after considering the site analysis and the challenges that faced the city. They ended up formulating an integrated vision that would include all the stakeholders and also address the stakeholders' requirements. To be able to do so, a number of steps will be compulsory. The strategy referred to the infamous 100 Resilience Cities program, which had already laid out the necessary steps and methodology to create and achieve resilient cities. These steps are outlined below (source: Rotterdam Resilience Strategy):

1. i) An assessment of the current situation and defining the city's challenges: using a list of the main fields of activity in the city in which it includes 12 aspects, that should be covered by the resilience strategy. These aspects are categorized in four sections, which are:
   • - health and well-being;
   • - economy and society;
   • - infrastructure and environment;
   • - leadership and strategy.
2. ii) Review the main transitions in development:
   • - the economy of the 21st Century ("next economy"): simultaneous transitions from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy, from analogue to digital and from a linear extractive economic model to a circular sustainable model;
   • - climate change: rising sea levels, unpredictable river flow volumes, more frequent and more intense rainfall, subsidence and heat stress;
   • - digitization: exponential rate of technological progress and development, characterized by the Internet of Things, Smart City and Big Data. Despite it presenting plenty of opportunities, it also increased the levels of dependency and vulnerability in the field of security and privacy;
   • - new democracy: individualization, an increase in self-organization, assertive citizens and consumers, better information, new roles for government and utility services, as well as the emergence of the "prosumers" (people who are simultaneously consumers and producers);
   • - unknown developments: the ultimate form of resilience needs to deal with unexpected development or changes that might happen and turn out quite differently to what was anticipated.
3. iii) Defining action areas: based on the analysis and the city challenges, the city decided to formulate its vision and goals around four main areas: citizens, infrastructure, governance and economy.
4. iv) Defining the resilience lens: based on the seven qualities of resilience, that is: reflective, resourceful, robust, redundant, flexible, inclusive and integrated.
5. v) Defining focus areas: based on the city's challenges, which are: social cohesion and education; energy transition; climate adaptation; cyber use and security; critical infrastructure; changing urban governance (changes in society and democracy, driven by moving away from the top-down hierarchy to a more bottom-up approach with much greater levels of community and citizen involvement); a changing economy that is driven more by sharing and technological innovation "Next Economy".
6. vi) Define the resilience goals: based on the city analysis (12 aspects);
7. vii) Define actions and related actions: connected to the vision and objective of each goal.

1.3.2. Rotterdam Resilience Strategy - Goals, stakeholders

The Resilience Strategy 2030 adopted by the city of Rotterdam includes seven goals with reference from the resilience qualities: (i) Rotterdam: a balanced society; (ii) World Port City built on clean and reliable energy; (iii) Rotterdam Cyber Port City; (iv) Climate Adaptive city to a new level; (v) infrastructure ready to face the 21st century; (vi) Rotterdam network city; and (vii) anchoring resilience in the city.

Figure 1.1. Resilience goals of Rotterdam Brochure. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/douay/transitions.zip

(Source: Rotterdam Resilience Strategy 2016).

The city of Rotterdam managed to launch the resilience strategy by featuring good public participation and the involvement of different stakeholders such as the Rotterdam residents, public and private organizations, businesses and knowledge institutions in the decision-making process. Table 1.2 presents a summary of most of the stakeholders that participated in the process of coming up with the Resilience Strategy 2030.

Table 1.2. Stakeholders and actors

(source: Rotterdam Resilience Strategy)

• - The International Water Exchange, powered by the Rockefeller Foundation
• - 100 Resilient Cities
• - Rotterdam Centre for Resilient Delta Cities
• - URBACT: Resilient Europe...