Reinventing Sister City Relationships as a Tool in Cosmopolitan World

Abstract

In 1979 Rotterdam and Shanghai became sister cities. This bond was special for both Rotterdam (and the Netherlands) and Shanghai (and the PRC). For the Netherlands the relationship between Rotterdam and Shanghai was the first official relationship with a city/country outside of Europe. For Shanghai this was one of the first five relationships with the outside world. In 2019 Rotterdam and Shanghai celebrated their 40th year sister city anniversary. This relationship seems to be one of the few, possibly the only one that knows 40 years of active engagement. Although the activities organised and the dynamics between the cities have been changing over and in time there is until this day a strong connection between Rotterdam and Shanghai. This study shows that investing in a sister city relationship can be a fitting tool to adapt to an ever changing and increasingly cosmopolitan world. This can however only be the case if the investments that take place meet certain conditions. These conditions are: 1) strong administrative support from both cities and other relevant (semi-) public institutions, community involvement and the creation of a ‘local international network’, the presence of qualitative management (including clarity and consensus on goals) and a (permanent) organisational structure. These factors are strengthened by certain moderating and/or mediating variables such as a shared history, the emergence of personal relationships based on the existing professional ones and the (geo)political and global economic context in which the relationship develops. The way in which these variables interact can lead to either a strengthening or a weakening relationship. The forty years of relationship have shown that it is possible to manage the involved variables in such a way that a sister city relationship blooms. There are however also situations in which the management of the relationship is done wrong (or absent) leading to weakening the relationship. The lesson for those involved in the Rotterdam-Shanghai relationship (as well as any other type of bilateral city relationship, should be aware of the way in which variables interact and what their role is in managing those variables.