Marking Gentrification
Rotterdam Noord, Crooswijk, NL, 2024
with [ KraakSpreekUur Rotterdam ], [ Autonomy Lab WdKA ]
as part of symposium [ "How to Continue Self-Organization" ]
at [ Roodkaapje ]
Posters designed by Lynn from [ KSU Rotterdam ]

[ Download Research PDF ]

“The municipality and Havensteder share the ambition to make Oude Noorden an attractive city district, in which special efforts are made to increase the number of promising families in the district.”

Marking Gentrification is a brief community research focusing on 12 properties in Rotterdam Noord and Crooswijk that are connected by having been squatted and evicted within the past 3 years. This culminated in a tour and action to will mark the buildings with posters that make visible bits of the oral histories and contextualize them within their development trajectories—by gluing, taping or stapling the posters to the walls or boarded-up windows.

The posters, designed by Lynn from KSU Rotterdam, mimic VPS security posters that are placed on vacant buildings. The narratives, rumors and insider facts are collected from a few dozen people involved in these squats, former residents of the social housing and neighbors.

Whereas gentrification can become a generalized narrative, we choose to make specific case studies of individual and scattered properties to show how gentrification is specifically occurring. The research takes us across a neighborhood of old rotting-pile housing stock, common for varied ownership and uneven development. The buildings were owned by social housing companies, the municipality, private developers and slumlords.

We also made a focus on evictions and redevelopment from within the past five years because of how drastically different the financial real estate situation is now than even 10 years ago. This adds to the specificity of knowledge we need now.