The New Academy
Rotterdam as knowledge city
Rotterdam is a city in perpetual transition from a global industrial port city, often serviced by a migrant labour force, to a worldwide linked, highly automated, knowledge-driven, and hopefully socially and ecologically just city. As a global port city and a metropolitan centre of cognitive capitalism, Rotterdam is shaped by advanced financial flows and technological infrastructure along with an uneven distribution of wealth, ethnic diversity, diverse demographics, and high ecological risks.
City as an archive of knowledge
These complex and multi-layered relationships contribute to making Rotterdam into a rich archive of living knowledge, only a fraction of which is visible and utilised. The New Academy assumes that there is much more knowledge available, which can contribute to a city that functions better for, and is more connected to, all its inhabitants. When this under-represented knowledge is included in the plans for urban transformation, it increases the chances of inclusive and sustainable development that does justice to the multifaceted nature of the city of Rotterdam. What would a cognitive city look like if it were designed by all its citizens?
Traditional institutions are not enough
The New Academy works from the idea that knowledge is produced in a variety of places and by a variety of people. This happens mostly in an unorganised way and often not for profit. It means that traditional knowledge institutions such as universities, colleges, and academies no longer have a monopoly on the production of knowledge. Even less so in the all-important areas of digital and information technology, climate policy and socio-economic planning. As a consequence, if only traditional institutional knowledge is used for urban development, only a part of the city is involved.
As an interdisciplinary organisation of national and international reach, firmly grounded in Rotterdam, Nieuwe Instituut offers an alternative site for the production and distribution of knowledge that is not limited to intellectuals, teachers, researchers, and designers, but where all citizens can participate in a democratic process of collecting and sharing information, analysing data, making defensible knowledge claims, and expressing critical evaluations of on-going events and of future perspectives.