Post by Tiffani Navratil
Today we visited Cor van Asch at the RDM Campus in the ports of Rotterdam. Cor is a project developer for the Port Authority of Rotterdam and is an expert in the redevelopment process for the large amount of land and buildings that the Port Authority owns along the Rhine. He was kind enough to host us for the day, first giving us a presentation concerning the history of the docklands in Rotterdam and their long-term redevelopment plans and then taking us on a walking tour of the one of the many tracts of land owned by the Port Authority and discussing both its historical value and future potential. The walking tour had a lot of impact on our group, impressing upon us the enormous scale and complexity of the Port Authority’s property, of which we were only able to see a small fraction during our three-hour tour.
The medieval harbor of Rotterdam is located right in the city center, 40 km east of the coast. It stayed relatively the same size for several hundred years, until the economic boom of the Golden Age forced the dock area to expand, causing new ports to be dredged west of the original structures. The new ports of the 17th century were supplemented again in the 19th century with the creation of new shipping areas for Rotterdam’s growing commerce. Cor’s office is located in this area, in a building that was once abandoned, but underwent a comprehensive restoration in 2003. And right next door is the RDM campus, a former warehouse and dockyard that now houses a technical school and over 800 students.
The RDM campus was one of the Port Authority’s biggest land redevelopment projects in recent years. As a private company whose shares are owned by the local government of Rotterdam and the Dutch national government (one-third and two-thirds, respectively), the Port Authority is able to enact major redevelopment projects efficiently and effectively, apply for subsidies from the national government and the European Union for projects that have a significant civic benefit, and finance the remainder of the project with minimal risk and healthy returns. The technical school at RDM is one its success stories. The once-vacant and derelict space is now populated and highly functioning, and the flexible interior spaces generate a significant rental income from both the school and the technology start-up businesses on site, which are provided with affordable office spaces and a working relationship with the creative talents of the students next door.
One of the most exciting projects currently underway is the creation of brand-new ports on the far-western reaches of the Rhine’s southern bank. The port expansion of the 19th century accelerated into the 20th century, and was revived again with new fervor post-World War II. Now that nearly all the Maas west of Rotterdam’s city center had been converted to docklands, the next available space for construction is the shallow sea shelf just west of the river’s mouth. The area is currently 40 m below mean sea level, but will be filled with sand until the newly-created land mass is 5 m above sea level. The new port will have an area of 2000 m2 of land and more than twice that in associated water access. It is one of the most ambitious projects that we have looked at thus far, but after learning about the determination of the Dutch populace, it is a goal well within their reach. They are so efficient in their development projects, they might even finish making this giant port before I finish writing this essay.
2011 The Cultural Ecology of Water in the Netherlands 