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During the long nineteenth century Bremen, Liverpool, Marseille and Rotterdam developed rapidly and built new harbour districts beyond the confines of the city. These new waterfronts became the zones of the other; an area defined by the social and cultural lives of casual workers, transient migrants and other disadvantaged groups and became a place in need of social and cultural reform. Few scholars have paid attention to the specific interrelations between migration and the transformation of urban space in port cities. This article addresses the issue of how diverse national and transnational migrant movements have shaped the urban identity of these port cities in this period. In a comparative framework, it raises the question what impact a transient population had on the harbour-related districts and how the appearance of these informal zones contributed to the image of the port city as a place of otherness.

This open access book discusses Rotterdam as clear example of a superdiverse city that is only reluctantly coming to terms with this new reality. Rotterdam, as is true for many post-industrial cities, has seen a considerable backlash against migration and diversity: the populist party Leefbaar Rotterdam of the late Pim Fortuyn is already for many years the largest party in the city. At the same time Rotterdam has become a majority minority city where the people of Dutch descent have become a numerical minority themselves. The book explores how Rotterdam is coming to terms with superdiversity, by an analysis of its migration history of the city, the composition of the migrant population and the Dutch working class population, local politics and by a comparison with Amsterdam and other cities. As such it contributes to a better understanding not just of how and why super-diverse cities emerge but also how and why the reaction to a super-diverse reality can be so different. By focusing on different aspects of superdiversity, coming from different angles and various disciplinary backgrounds, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in migration, policy sciences, urban studies and urban sociology, as well as policymakers and the broader public.

This chapter analyses the major trends in Rotterdam's migration history in three periods: the early-modern period (1600–1800), the era in which the Working Class Port City was created (1850–1940), and the post-war period until the 1980s. Rotterdam's pre-industrial history convincingly reveals a multi-ethnic and religious diverse society. Small foreign minorities could have a significant influence on Rotterdam's cultural, political and economic development. Even strong national identities did not restrict a strong sense of local attachment. The port city of the nineteenth century was less diverse, considering the smaller number of foreign migrants that settled in the city. The migration narrative of the port city in this period is inexorably linked to that of the working city. This narrative became highly popular in the post-war reconstruction period. The offspring of Rotterdam's nineteenth century rural-urban migrants had rebuilt the city after the fatal German bombardment in May 1940 and had been responsible for its successful post-war industrial port development. The arrival of non-Western migrants in the 1960s and 1970s challenged Rotterdam's nineteenth century popularised migration narrative. Policy-makers have suggested that this post-war migration process is fundamentally different from older migration patterns. In general, we tend to be too pessimistic about the post war integration and too optimistic about patterns of integration in the past, particularly during the nineteenth century. Notwithstanding the fact that by then the large majority of the migrants were Dutch, marginalisation and exclusion took place on a larger scale than realised. Our long-term perspective hopes to contribute to link earlier migration narratives to Rotterdam's recent superdiversity.

Shipping canals have supported maritime traffic and port development for many centuries. Radical transformations of these shipping landscapes through land reclamation, diking, and canalization were celebrated as Herculean works of progress and modernity. Today, shipping canals are the sites of increasing tension between economic growth and associated infrastructural interventions focused on the quality, sustainability, and resilience of natural systems and spatial settlement patterns. Shifting approaches to land/water relations must now be understood in longer political histories in which pre-existing alliances influence changes in infrastructure planning. On the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the New Waterway (Nieuwe Waterweg), the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus universities PortCityFutures Center hosted an international symposium in October 2022 to explore the past, present, and future of this channel that links Rotterdam to the North Sea. Symposium participants addressed issues of shipping, dredging, and planning within in the Dutch delta, and linked them to contemporary debates on the environmental, spatial, and societal conditions of shipping canals internationally. The thematic issue builds on symposium conversations, and highlights the importance of spatial, economic, and political linkages in port and urban development. These spatial approaches contribute to more dynamic, responsive strategies for shipping canals through water management and planning.