Quality of Life in Rotterdam, Netherlands

I have lived in Rotterdam for over the past 20 years and I must say, over the last few years Rotterdam has became a lot safer. The city is developing wonderfully. It was even announced as European city of the year.

However, I must acknowledge that it used to have an image of a somewhat criminal, and maybe cold and hardworking harbour city. Partly, because what used to be the most beautiful part of the city does not excist anymore, since the city was bombed in the second world war. This caused a quick rebuilt of the city centre and a lot of dense and ugly new citydistricts that give the city an somewhat unsafe atmosphere. However, a lot of neglected quarters and citydistrict are being renewed and crimeproblems are not as big as Dutch people often think. The dutch often eggagerate being sceptical about their own cities and country. In short, yes, Rotterdam is unsafe compared to other parts of the Netherlands, but every city has higher crime rates than suburbs and the country side. Besides, crime is often eggagerated by the dutch. Several researches concluded that however the fear of crime has increased, crime itself has actually only decreased.