Food as creative city politics in the city of Rotterdam

This paper investigates the emerging importance of food and Urban Agriculture in the city of Rotterdam. In particular these themes are the focus of two policy documents recently launched by the municipality: the Sustainability Program and the strategic agenda Food and the City. In the process of rebranding the city for middle and upper class residents and creative workers, these strategies directly contribute to the marketing of Rotterdam as the most “sustainable world harbor city”. By way of discourse analysis, we analyze policy documents to highlight the tensions between the advertised social and economic benefits of these operations. Food and Urban Agriculture emerges as being framed to target the needs of the low-income multicultural population, and at the same time of the upper and creative class. The paper concludes that municipal experiments on food can be used strategically to foster competition and city-branding; as such these can ultimately be considered a form of creative city politics.