Living on the Southside

Register here

Register before 10 February 2023. The regular participation fee for this studio is 250 euro. We offer one free spot for participation by a Ukrainian applicant as part of the UNUN network. Also special fees apply for special situations. For more info please send an email to info[@]schoolforthecity.nl

Because of the port and its connection with the rest of the globe, Rotterdam has attracted people from all over the world for decades already. Nowadays over 170 different nationalities call the city their home and the population has become so diverse that Rotterdam has become part of a worldwide family of Majority-Minority cities - cities in which more than half of the population has a migration background. And, not just the number of nationalities has increased: as generations pass, also the diversity within the different migrant groups has become increasingly complex. Anthropologist Steven Vertovec calls this ‘Superdiversity’ as a way of looking at the mix of identities of our cities in a less reductive, less statistical way.

Superdiverse cities like Rotterdam bring with them a next stage in the integration process, where ethnicity is no longer the most important let alone the sole factor with which people define themselves. Instead of the old dividing lines of ethnicity or language, superdiversity seems to create new connections. Communities also start being based on other factors like education level, religion, profession, sexual orientation, or neighbourhood, in which many ethnical backgrounds and languages are mixed. In other words: the simple pie chart of ethnicity becomes mixed up into a fluid composition of overlapping and mixing colours.

During this studio - spread over two subsequent Fridays and Saturdays, filled with lectures, excursions, and conversations, with individual research and one collective Wednesday evening in-between - you will become acquainted with the terminology of Superdiversity and what it could mean for urban development. Participants will be introduced to different research methods. Next to desk research, we will go on the streets to observe and ask people for their ideas and wishes for a specific part of the city: the area which is branded as Feyenoord City