The much-needed repair and rebuilding of Amsterdam’s historical quay walls and bridges coincides with growing demand for innovation, ranging from improved logistics and energy systems to enhanced biodiversity and climate resilience. These technology-driven transformations are unfolding in the heart of a World Heritage property known for its distinctive architectural and urban character. This article explores the complexities of integrating heritage into transdisciplinary design processes, focusing on the Canal Ring Area inside the Singelgracht. It proposes three axes for planning interventions that draw meaningfully on the past while addressing future needs, including those related to climate change. In particular, the article considers how historical analysis, spatial mapping and narrative-based approaches can strengthen the integration of historic spaces and practices into locally grounded, sustainable, climate-responsive design. ... Read more

Places of constant hustle and bustle, where people and goods arrive and depart, where land and water meet: port cities have traditionally, and quite easily, given rise to slogans, metaphors, and even myths ascribed to their particular maritime urban profile. Such conceptions are not merely superficial one-liners. As pointed out in the introduction to this volume, they also function as invitations to explore micro-geographies, often overlooked associations and traces in the contemporary environment (Harteveld, 2021), and to further theorize the distinct character of port cities (Hein, Luning, & Van de Laar, 2021). However, as with more general urban discourses, trying to pinpoint ‘the port city’ leads to the realization that any notion of ‘port cityness’ inevitably brings together certain meanings and dimensions that potentially compete with and contradict each other (Vigar, Graham, & Healey, 2005). In the context of port cities, the well-known ‘hustle and bustle’ narrative evokes imagery with an economic dimension of the mass cargo serving as indicator of global port competition; a social dimension, of the constant in- and outflux of varied groups of people; and a cultural dimension, of the places and practices port city residents and visitors have engaged in. This chapter focuses on the latter aspect, thereby examining the cultural dimension of port cities through the history of their often-stereotyped pleasures (Baptist, 2020), and how over time these have been reconsidered and relocated through different urban planning initiatives. [...] ... Read more

Digital tools and related open datasets, particularly for geospatial analysis, provide an opportunity to connect planning history more closely to the methods of planning practice and heritage itself. While contemporary planners have adopted advanced, data-driven tools to model urban systems and environmental risks, planning historians have largely kept relying on traditional methods, such as static cartography and archival interpretation. This disconnect has contributed to a widening gap between planning practice and its historiography. Drawing on historical examples, such as Maurice Rotival’s pioneering use of computers in planning, and recent digital mapping initiatives, this paper argues for a more integrated, interdisciplinary approach to planning history. It examines how digital platforms, datasets and analytical tools can improve spatial and temporal analysis while maintaining critical historical inquiry. The paper discusses practices such as GIS-based analysis, digital inventories and dashboards, and reflects on institutional and methodological barriers to wider adoption. Engaging with the digital turn enables planning history to evolve beyond biographical and text-based traditions, offering richer insights into the urban past and informing more sustainable, just and historically grounded futures. ... Read more

This working paper is an outcome of the first international Open Maps Meeting,organized in November 2024 at the Dutch National Archives and National Library,and funded by Open Science NL, KNAW Humanities Cluster, Stichting Pica andDelft University of Technology. It synthesizes general insights from the Open MapsMeeting in a first introductory overview, intended for a broad scholarly audienceinterested in methodological cartographic and historical mapping advancements.This working paper is primarily based on presentations and input from the expertsessions during the first day of the Open Maps Meeting.

https://openmapsmeeting.nl/publications/2025/open-maps ... Read more

Rotterdams schiereiland Katendrecht wordt tegenwoordig minder in één adem genoemd met haar notoire verleden als Chinatown of red-light district dan met schijnbaar alomtegenwoordige tendensen van gentrificatie. Hoe voorbij de polarisatie te kijken in dit soort debatten? Wandelingen met (oud-)buurtbewoners brengen je – letterlijk en figuurlijk – al een heel eind op weg, zo weet Vincent Baptist. ... Read more

This chapter develops a layered analysis of the Schiedamsedijk, Rotterdam’s interwar amusement street. It links the street’s split socio-cultural character to that of port cities in general, and investigates this along the lines of a similar divide in perceptions of safety and security. Based on an historical bird’s-eye view of the pleasure area, the Schiedamsedijk’s criminal and cosmopolitan sides are discussed. Both of these maritime urban traits were neutralised when the Schiedamsedijk reinvented itself as a domestic tourist attraction in the late 1930s. Through visual sources, interchanges are foregrounded between contrasting internal and external perspectives on safety, which ultimately help to nuance and reframe the stereotypical characters and ambiguous nature traditionally ascribed to this historical environment of pleasure culture. ... Read more

Bij een havenstad denken we aan industriële herrie van voorbijvarende schepen en fabrieksnijverheid, toch? Een industrieel schiereiland als Katendrecht wordt ondertussen niet meer gedomineerd door havenarbeid en vrachtverkeer. Hoe wordt zo’n omgetoverde havenbuurt op het vlak van geluid vandaag beleefd door bewoners? Het zijn inzichten waar gebiedsontwikkelaars iets mee kunnen. ... Read more

Contemporary redevelopment and gentrification of urban waterfront areas has stimulated research on local residents’ recollections regarding changes in their direct living environment. The peninsula of Katendrecht in Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ main port city, constitutes a peculiar case in this respect, as its legacy of notorious maritime pleasure quarter has been overtaken by the neighborhood’s recent urban renewal and waterfront regeneration processes. This article investigates how residents who have witnessed Katendrecht’s decline as pleasure district experience walking through the redeveloped neighborhood nowadays. This case study demonstrates the potential for interdisciplinary synergy between different scholarly fields, through a specific mapping approach that links together the methodologies of walking interviews and time geography. By focusing on spatio-temporal ‘standstills’ in mapping the walking interviews’ non-predetermined routes, overarching interview patterns are uncovered and participants’ matching observations are identified, revealing a range of responses to a waterfront area’s characteristics caught up in processes of gentrification. ... Read more

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to propose a methodology to empirically investigate the longitudinal development of social media content concerning buildings characterized by iconic architecture and second, to report on the application of this methodology.

Design/methodology/approach
We collected and analyzed empirical data of social media content shared via Instagram between 2011 and 2019 on 16 buildings that can be considered iconic architecture projects. Using an automated pipeline, we collected and processed 264,000 posts and 140,000 images from Instagram for the selected case studies. By studying the posting activity of Instagram users through time series analysis and conducting content analysis of the social media posts by means of both image classification and topic modeling, we report on the development of users’ capturing and reception of the selected case studies on Instagram over time.

Findings
First, we identify two distinct time patterns of social media content: instantly popular buildings whose popularity fades over time and buildings that gradually gain popularity over time. Second, we distinguish differences in the content of social media posts: some buildings are primarily covered for their architectural features and others for their cultural function and facilities.

Originality/value
Using empirical investigation of Instagram data on iconic architectural projects, we have identified a correlation: buildings primarily posted for their architecture are generally also the ones to gain instant online popularity that subsequently faded over time. In contrast, buildings primarily posted for their function and facilities slowly gained popularity on the social media platform over time. ... Read more

Hoe zijn Rotterdams beruchte amusementsbuurten verdwenen in de loop van de twintigste eeuw, en hoe zijn hun erfenissen blijven hangen in het veranderende ruimtelijke en culturele weefsel van de havenstad? In tegenstelling tot Hamburgs Reeperbahn of Parallel Avenue in Barcelona ​​kan Rotterdam tegenwoordig niet meer buigen op een enkele afgebakende ruimte die de typische cultuur van de havenstad heeft overgedragen naar het huidige tijdperk van wereldwijd toerisme en evenementen. ... Read more

Drawing on examples from Amsterdam to Venice, Vincent Baptist analyses two emerging urban paradigms — the “smooth city” and the “wellness city” — as models for understanding the reciprocal relations of care between cities and their inhabitants. ... Read more

'Where people have fun, encounters happen. Where encounters take place, change begins. Are pleasurescapes in port cities Europe’s true driving forces after all?'

With this tagline, the research project Pleasurescapes, funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) and running from 2019 to 2022, investigated historical spaces and legacies of modern entertainment and deviant culture across European port cities. Established as a collaboration between scholars from the port cities of Hamburg, Rotterdam, Barcelona, and Gothenburg, the Pleasurescapes project sought to address the dominance that has traditionally been reserved for port cities’ economic and industrial importance, and rebalance this by shedding light on their underexplored cultural heritage. In doing so, the research team utilised the new ‘pleasurescapes’ concept to craft links between past and present maritime urban contact zones, from bygone sailortowns to contemporary waterfronts, but also to point the attention to overlooked international events and intriguing cultural practices that found a fertile breeding ground in port cities’ transnational environments. Main publications focused both on the conceptual ramifications of the ‘pleasurescapes’ term and its operationalisation within different contexts.[11] Additionally, the project’s final output intends to reimagine and recount the cultural counter-narratives of the investigated port cities: a museum exhibition and theater play, both based on sources and heritage objects uncovered during the collaborative research, are set to launch in the coming year. […] ... Read more

PortCityFutures is an interdisciplinary research center, originally set up between the Dutch universities of Delft, Rotterdam, and Leiden. It focuses on the legacies, uses, and future developments of port city regions, motivated to let port and city jointly evolve again, after decades in which these entities have increasingly grown apart under industrial imperatives. As port cities are uniquely located on the edge between sea and land, they have limited space for reinventing their infrastructurally dense and culturally rich territories. Yet, the historical trajectories of port cities also comprise a persistent resilience towards change and future challenges, which can be capitalised on by (re)cultivating shared values and mindsets. [...] ... Read more

Op 9 juni 1899, aan de vooravond van de twintigste eeuw waarin Rotterdam zijn status van wereldhaven definitief zou waarmaken, bezocht koningin Wilhelmina, begeleid door haar moeder koningin Emma, de stad aan de Maas. Als tienjarige had zij Rotterdam ook al een bezoek gebracht en toen een gedenksteen gelegd voor de naar haar genoemde Wilhelminakade, vertrekpunt van de Holland-Amerika-Lijn en een van de boegbeelden van de wereldhaven in opkomst. [...] ... Read more

Contradictions and conflicts lie at the heart of port cities, with contemporary waterfront redevelopments offering the latest controversial associations to traditional maritime history. Tracing back classic urban renewal and modernization processes in maritime areas, this article develops a case study on a notorious pleasure neighborhood (the Zandstraatbuurt) in Rotterdam, eradicated when the Dutch port city entered a new stage of urban and industrial development in the decades around 1900. The case study is embedded within a conceptual framework on nostalgia and its connections to bygone sailor culture. Significant cultural imaginations of the historical pleasure district are discussed, and notable journalistic accounts help to assess how nostalgic sentiments attempted to shape the legacy of the neighborhood around the time of its dissolution. Finally, general newspaper coverage of the district after its turn-of-the-century life span is analyzed, thereby demonstrating the potential for further research on urban nostalgia in historical contexts. ... Read more

For the PortCityFutures community, the working year of 2022 started with a five-day workshop hosted by the Lorentz Center. Even though we couldn’t meet in person because of the lockdown in the Netherlands, these five days were full of connection: between academic, societal and governance partners, between new ideas, concepts and tools, and between water, culture, space and society. Through presentations, discussions and hands-on exercises, we got to know each other’s work better, but were also introduced to new ways for balancing the focus on technology and economy within port cities with a diversity of spatial, social and cultural approaches. In this report, we look back at each day and synthesize the main learnings from this workshop for our world-wide research community. ... Read more