From Rhetoric to Reality: The Publicness of Urban Space in Rotterdam through the Government of Safety

This research investigates the intricate dynamics of safety governance within Rotterdam's city administration, with a specific focus on public urban spaces. Employing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the methodological framework, the study examines how the government of safety articulates the publicness of urban public space and citizenship in Rotterdam. The objective of this thesis is to deconstruct these discourses and connect these to the active role of urban public spaces in shaping the vulnerable positions of particular social groups and their conditional citizenship. The analysis draws upon vision programs pertaining to public urban space, local safety programs, and other policy documents that discuss various safety instruments. The findings reveal an administrative production of space, whereby urban spaces are strategically organized to facilitate the rational management of populations. This dynamic operates within the framework of risk management and governmentality, where the conversion of "weak living environments" into "desirable residential areas" serves to exclude ethnic minority groups and the “underclass” from urban public spaces. Ultimately, this research sheds light on the socio-spatial ramifications of safety discourses, influencing publicness of urban public spaces and materializing differentiated forms of citizenship.