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Cursory Connections: Urban Ties of the New Middle Class in Rotterdam

OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies, Delft University of Technology, PO Box 5030, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands, M.vanderLand{at}tudelft.nl

Highly educated professionals and managers have played an important part in the economic transformation of cities into consumption milieux. Nowadays, this new middle class is still considered a great potential contributor to vital cities, as consumers, as a workforce and as participants in civil society. Having witnessed increasing independence from central government over recent years, cities increasingly depend on their presence. However, until now, the new middle class mostly lives outside the city and appears to be highly mobile. The paper examines the urban ties of the new middle class, all working in Rotterdam, but living in as well as outside the city. This happens in an ideal-typical way, utilising three principles along which urban ties are formed: proximity, participation and consumption. The paper claims that, in the urban ties of the new middle class, in addition to the principles of proximity and participation, (symbolic) consumption constitutes an important and underestimated contribution.

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