THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406250183
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940626 LENGTH: ROTTERDAM
Later this year, the Dutch parliament is expected to approve a plan to split the center city of Rotterdam, with 580,000 people, into at least eight separate towns, which would then recombine with 17 suburban neighbors to form a new metropolitan region of Greater Rotterdam with 1.2 million people.
{REST} The changes will effectively create one large regional government, with about 25 smaller towns. The towns would govern such areas as schools and housing issues; the regional government would shape Rotterdam through control of such areas as transportation, economic development and land planning.
Both Rotterdam, home to the largest port in the world, and the smaller towns have approved the plan, which will take effect in January 1997.
For Hampton Roads, the equivalent would be if Kempsville, Lynnhaven, Ghent, Norview, Greenbrier, downtown Portsmouth and Churchland each became separate towns, while a new elected metropolitan regional government became Hampton Roads, or Greater Norfolk.
The Rotterdam merger has two goals: to make the entire region more competitive internationally by reducing local competition; and to use regional resources to solve the problems of the center city.
Contrast this approach to what is happening in Hampton Roads, where attempts at regional cooperation have often foundered and where the latest dream is something called Plan 2007.
The plan, drawn up by nearly 100 business and academic leaders, attempts to boost the area's fortunes by pooling resources for economic development, tourism, transportation and small business financing.
But even this modest proposal is far from a sure thing. It is being considered by cities on both sides of Hampton Roads, where some are questioning whether they want to spend their citizens' money for projects in a neighbor's back yard.
In Holland, however, the city of Rotterdam and the suburbs are merging in part because they are convinced that to keep the port competitive, they must handle the problems of the center city and put aside squabbling among the municipalities that has stalemated development decisions. Officials note it took 15 years to build a distribution center near the port because a smaller town resisted its location there.
``We believe that competition is no longer between nations but between regions,'' said W.A. Straas-heijm, a Rotterdam official who has shepherded much of the legislation through. ``Being able to plan as a region will reduce the time to build new developments.''
In the process, officials here hope to solve other problems in the urban center that is surrounded by independent suburban areas.
In style, this city is a Pittsburgh or a Portsmouth. Residents sit in neighborhood pubs and cheer on the city's two professional soccer teams, especially when they're playing against more cosmopolitan Amsterdam. They follow closely the construction projects downtown, such as the modernistic new train station.
But the comparison is not always flattering. Over the past few decades, this city on the Rhine River has been beset with problems that Manhattan and Hampton Roads residents might recognize. Rotterdam's population has dropped, while unemployment, crime and social problems have risen. Many of the city's banking, shipping and insurance executives now live in Rotterdam's necklace of smaller suburban towns.
Like Hampton Roads, the center city and its neighbors struggle with how to cooperate on economic development, transportation and planning policies.
To deal with these problems, Rotterdam's suburban neighbors have opted for an approach that has drawn attention of urban observers and could be a lesson for Hampton Roads.
The changes have attracted attention because of their scope and implications.
By Jan. 1, 1997:
Most of the city's 25,000 civil servants in Rotterdam will change jobs, bosses or both. Teachers, social service workers and trash collectors will work for the new smaller towns. Economic development, port authority, police and planning officials will work for the new regional government. The idea is not only to regionalize government, but to push authority for decisions that directly affect people, like schools and social services, down to the lowest possible layer of government.
The suburban towns, whose councils approved the changes, will see their property taxes rise to pay for crime prevention and social programs in the center city, as well as to fund the museums and theaters for which Rotterdam is still a center. They do this with the belief that a sick center city will ultimately drag down the health of the region and of the smaller towns.
The City Council members of Rotterdam will all lose their jobs. To return to office, they will have to compete to become council members of the individual towns or of the new greater region.
``Many people said it's a great idea, but it will never happen,'' said A.M. Flierman, general secretary for the transitional regional council. ``But there came a moment when it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Too much time and energy had been put into it to stop it.''
Though the city's shipbuilding industry lost out to Asian competitors and others in the 1970s, the port itself continues to grow.
It stretches for some 20 miles, its banks lined with giant cranes, oil-containers and ships from all over the world. Many carry cargo for Germany, France or Switzerland.
The Rhine River pierces more than 800 miles into this continent, making the river effectively the Mississippi of Europe. Two thirds of all oil for western Europe enters here, port officials say, plus twice as many container ships as any other port in Europe. Just under 300 million tons of cargo enter and exit the port each year.
The center city owns all the land underneath the port, even though it stretches through numerous suburban towns, much in the way Norfolk and Portsmouth own water reservoirs in Virginia Beach and Suffolk.
But the city has its problems. Its population has dropped from 750,000 in the 1950s to 580,000 today. Immigrants from Turkey, North Africa and former Dutch colonies like Indonesia now dominate many neighborhoods. The city had 49 murders last year, less than Norfolk, a city half the size of Rotterdam, but high by Dutch standards.
And that can threaten continued growth of the port: With the approval of the Maastricht treaty in 1992, Europe is essentially one economy. Cars no longer even slow down at the border of Belgium and Holland, for example. A city can lose a major industry much more quickly on this level playing field.
A key factor in the approval of the new region was the Rotterdam City Council's vote to dissolve the city into eight to 12 smaller towns. The exact number is still being hashed out. A past effort to form a greater Rotterdam 10 years ago failed because the 17 surrounding smaller communities, ranging in size from 12,000 to 80,000, feared domination by the big city.
These smaller towns look different from American suburbs but play a similar role economically. Many are surrounded by farmland, even though they are physically close to the big city.
``Big brother Rotterdam is removed from the scene,'' Flierman says, ``but what they (the smaller towns) get back is a very strict father or mother.''
It will take at least a decade to see if the plan works as advertised. The new municipalities and the new regional government may take the area in directions not yet predicted.
But if a measure of a city's health is its willingness to change with changing circumstances, Rotterdam rates well. As economic forces and population trends have made old political structures less relevant, Rotterdam has changed those structures rather than preserve them at a cost to its citizens. by CNB