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)
| Type of Stakeholders | # | Others |
|---|---|---|
| – Utility companies | 2 | – The International Water Exchange, powered by the Rockefeller Foundation– 100 Resilient Cities– Rotterdam Centre for Resilient Delta Cities– URBACT: Resilient Europe program– Cities experience and exchange with: Antwerp, Bristol, Burgas, Glasgow, Katowice, Malmo, Potenza, Rome, Thessaloniki, Vejle and the EU |
| – Municipality organizations | 6 | |
| – Housing associations | 3 | |
| – Waterboards | 3 | |
| – Port Authority Rotterdam | 1 | |
| – Civilian platforms | 1 | |
| – DCMR Environmental Agency | 1 | |
| Besides, 8 (platform) partners including knowledge institutes such as: Microsoft, AECOM, TNO, Drift, Resilient Delta Cities (RDC), Urbanisten, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam and DELTARES. | ||
Following this, Rotterdam took a comprehensive approach on the city’s efforts for resilience, targeting a holistic way to face challenges in smaller scales. All the goals scheduled to be acted upon by the different stakeholders were described in each section. It also included a description of the financing methods or feasibility; the current status of development or implementation; the categorization of the response – as short, medium or long term; and the owner and the level of impact, in the scale of an individual, district or the city.
Table 1.3. Rotterdam Resilience Goals
(source: Rotterdam Resilience Strategy 2016)
| GOAL 1: | Rotterdam: a balanced society: “Skilled and healthy citizens in a balanced society” |
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To build and strengthen resilience at the individual
|