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Book Reviews
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Imagine a Metropolis: Rotterdam’s Creative
Class, 1970–2000
PATRICIA VAN ULZEN, 2007
Rotterdam: 010 Publishers
234 pp. Euros 29.50 paperback
ISBN 978 90 6450 620 8 paperback
This superb study of Rotterdam’s creative classes pro-
vides an array of insights and makes a series of essen-
tial contributions to the growing interest within urban
studies about the role of creative entrepreneurs in
reimagining and remaking cities. Indeed, the work
of two key thinkers in the field, Florida (2002, on
the creative classes) and Anderson (1983, on ima-
gined communities) are major influences on van
Ulzen, although she commendably utilises the work
of other academics, particularly Sharon Zukin. The
depth and breadth of this book are noteworthy for
three main reasons. The first is the comprehensiveness
of its coverage of cultural activity in Rotterdam
(including photography, films, music, cafe´s, the
dance scene, architecture, artistic residential commu-
nities, family magazines and even a Rotterdam
cookery book). Second is the framing of this specific
Dutch case study within wider urban developments
impacting on global cities and, in particular, post-
industrial ‘second’ cities. Third is its exploration of
key concepts of modernity, multiculturalism, the ico-
nography and images of cities, political conflict, the
relationship between the local state and private
actors and the grounding of contemporary develop-
ments in the continuities and discontinuities of the
past. Furthermore, the book’s utilisation of the icono-
logical method of investigation pioneered in the
1930s by Edwin Panofsky (p. 40) results in it being
extensively and beautifully illustrated throughout.
Van Ulzen critically assesses how the concept of
Rotterdam as a wereldstad (world city) or metropolis
has evolved within the dimensions of the social,
material (architecture and urban design) and imagined
city. In doing so, she focuses on how an aesthetic view
of modernity canonised Rotterdam’s futuristic qual-
ities (p. 49) based on the iconography of roads and
traffic, high-rise buildings, city lights at night and
the docks/river, perfectly captured in poet Jules
Deeler’s notion of ‘neon romanticism’ (p. 83). Her
key insights include identifying how the contempor-
ary imagination of Rotterdam traces its roots back
to the early 20th century and in particular the interwar
period and also how the defining elements of moder-
nity were subject to a counter-movement of the
small-size ideal (the C70 movement in Rotterdam’s
case) in the 1970s. This historical account is fascinat-
ing, not least in counter-posing the 1930s equation of
increasing car traffic and urban progress with contem-
porary environmental concerns. Van Ulzen also ident-
ifies the limitations of ‘official’ municipal policies,
interventions and the role of aldermen in contrast
with underground cultural movements, artists and
entrepreneurs. The contribution of key individuals is
given particular prominence in her account. She also
makes the important point that economic conditions
are limited in their explanatory power for periods of
cultural renaissance, citing the 1930s and 1980s as
periods of simultaneous cultural expansion and econ-
omic recession (p. 153). Van Ulzen is particularly
strong on explaining how, far from the city of work
and the city of culture being juxtaposed, the industrial
heritage of cities such as Rotterdam is a key determi-
nant of their cultural assets, with linked aesthetic and
economic value, symbolised in the rehabilitation of
the port area (p. 109). She also finds, perhaps uncom-
fortably for local policy-makers and residents alike,
that the international cultural identities of ‘opposing’
cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam (and we can
also think of Glasgow/Edinburgh, Madrid/Barcelona
and others) are positively defined by their relationship
with each other, not withstanding the political hag-
gling over the sites for national cultural institutions
which she describes (p. 171).
Although it does not detract from the quality of the
analysis within its own set parameters, the book is con-
sciously limited in its application of Florida’s ideas.
Van Ulzen acknowledges that Florida defined the crea-
tive classes more broadly and crucially to include
media or business services. Although she notes that a
city’s cultural image may influence company reloca-
tions (p. 143), she focuses on the creative ‘professions’.
The absence of an account of the city’s relationship
with business entrepreneurs is a weakness, exacerbated
by the lack of coverage of the commercial impacts of
the cultural sectors upon the financial and employment
circumstances of Rotterdam.
This is linked to the one substantive issue where
this reviewer disagrees with van Ulzen’s commen-
tary. Unsurprisingly, this book attributes significant
influence to the creative classes in reshaping and
reimagining Rotterdam and gives a persuasive
account of the dynamics of this process. However, it
may overstate the extent to which the metropolitan
ideal has “regained its lustre for the public at large”
as the author claims (p. 111). She is convincing
when she shows how Paul Martens’ photographs or
Jules Deeler’s ‘Stadsgezicht’ (Cityscape) poem have
achieved mass popular appeal amongst Rotterdam-
mers. However, the claim that, due to a poster cam-
paign, no-one living in Rotterdam could have been
unaware of the emergence of a new magazine (Hard
1860 BOOK REVIEWS

3. DownloadedBy:[informainternalusers]At:13:5329October2007
Werken) is less believable (p. 87). This gets to the core
of the problem: the extent to which the vibrancy of
Rotterdam’s culture is disseminated beyond the crea-
tive class (see Savage, 1991). Van Ulzen is right to
refer to Thorton’s notion of ‘sub-cultural capital’ (p.
126), itself adapted from Bourdieu. However, one of
Bourdieu’s arguments is that cultural capital acts to
exclude as much as to include and to define otherness,
and ‘sub-cultural’ capital may be the epitome of this
process. Van Ulzen implicitly describes this in the
resistance of many residents to the new cafe´s of the
1980s or the popular reaction against key ideas of
modernity demonstrated in the consultation exercise
surrounding the Binnenstadsboek (‘inner city book’,
p. 76). Where this becomes more damaging is in the
author’s apparent regret that social housing develop-
ments in the city required more weight to be given
to occupants’ requirements than architects’ ideas (p.
107). The substantially negative impact of much Le
Corbusier -influenced public housing architecture on
the lives of deprived residents in many European
cities (Coleman, 1985) requires greater recognition
here, as well as a realisation of power differentials
between urban e´lites (creative as well as political)
and poorer citizens. A brunch for 5000 Rotterdam-
mers at the opening of the Erasmus Bridge was cer-
tainly an impressive event (p. 198) but does not in
itself counter such exclusionary forces.
Where van Ulzen is on stronger ground is her cru-
cially important account of how multiculturalism is an
inherent characteristic of metropolitanism. This
ranges from the dance scene being a “binding agent
for cultures” (p. 28) through the ‘Rotterdam Sparkles’
campaign of 2000 to the popular selection of the
Mevlana Mosque as Rotterdam’s most attractive
building (p. 214). Underpinning this is the idea that
cities can be the starting-point for securing an identity
(and similar processes are emerging in the self-defi-
nition of many minority ethnic citizens as primarily
Londoners rather than, say, ‘British’ citizens).
As many cities search for the “aura of cultural vital-
ity” within the global economy (p. 87)—for example,
through the Dutch development of broaedplaatsenbe-
lied (cultural incubation policies)—this book’s lasting
impression is of the real importance of how cities are
imagined and portrayed, grounded in Robert Park’s
realisation in 1925 and quoted here (p. 33), that the
city is a state of mind. With regard to Rotterdam, it
is therefore impossible not to be impressed with a
city that has ‘When everything proves an illusion, illu-
sion is the thing that remains’ printed on its dustcarts!
JOHN FLINT
Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research,
Sheffield Hallam University
References
ANDERSON, B. (1983) Imagined Communities.
London: Verso.
COLEMAN, A. (1985) Utopia on Trial: Visions and
Reality in Planned Housing. London: Hilary
Shipman.
FLORIDA, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class:
And How Its Transforming Work, Leisure, Community
and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.
SAVAGE, J. (1991) England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols
and Punk Rock: London: Faber.
THORNTON, S. (1995) Club Cultures, Music, Media
and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Clusters in Urban and Regional Development
ANDY CUMBERS and
DANNY MACKINNON (Eds), 2006
232 pp. £60.00 hardback
ISBN 0 4153 6011 0 hardback
Regional industrial clusters have been in vogue for
more than two decades now and there is little indi-
cation that their significance is waning. On the con-
trary, to quote from Simmie’s contribution to this
volume, clusters continue to hold a “beguiling siren
call” promising “increased competitiveness, higher
productivity, new firm formation, growth, profitabil-
ity, job growth and innovation” (p. 131). So time to
take stock and to see how these various claims can
be upheld. This is what this edited volume, based on
the earlier Special Issue published in Urban Studies
(Vol. 41, Nos 5/6) intends to do. After a summarising
introduction, 11 chapters focus on key issues and
topics in the clustering debate, including the role of
labour mobility, firms linkages, knowledge pro-
duction and circulation and industry cycles. They
are clustered under three headings, ‘Conceptualising
clusters’, ‘Clusters, knowledge and innovation’ and
‘From dynamic to mature clusters’. Starting-point
for the discussion is the claim that, as emphasised
by the editors in the introduction, ‘cluster’ remains a
‘fuzzy’, ‘chaotic’ and ‘incoherent’ concept (p. viii).
A key ambition of the volume is to bring some
clarity to the debate. So, what is the achievement,
11 chapters and 225 pages down the line?
A problem with answering this question is that the
volume does not really produce a conclusion itself.
The introduction primarily provides a summary and
a brief list of core directions for future research. In
particular, the editors point out the significance of
formal channels of labour mobility and the role of
external connections in the form of embedding in
international networks. Yet, they could have gone a
step further and considered the extent to which the
results hint at a more precise and more coherent
BOOK REVIEWS 1861