Civilising the City: Populism and Revanchist Urbanism in Rotterdam

This paper discusses the relevance of American literature on `revanchist urbanism' for understanding the policies of the populist government that ruled Rotterdam between 2002 and 2006. It is suggested that revanchist urbanism in the European context in general and in the case of Rotterdam in particular takes on a different form from that in the US. Moreover, a wholesale displacement of social-democratic policies by revanchist policies is not observed. Many policy measures which formed part-and-parcel of a social-democratic urban project—anti-segregation policies and policies to promote social cohesion—are redefined and reconfigured by populist parties so that they can be incorporated into more revanchist strategies. In this sense, the differences between social democratic and revanchist governance are large with respect to symbolism but small and gradual when it comes to actual policy measures.