Reported by Cécile Balavoine. Photos by Ludovic Maisant.
Second in the world in terms of foreign direct investment: in 2016, the Amsterdam-Rotterdam metropolitan region featured prominently in the IBM Global Locations Trend report. With 168 projects, the region was ranked behind London, still number one but losing ground as a result of the Brexit, and ahead of Paris, even though foreign investors were taking a wait-and-see attitude in a climate that was both post-attack and pre-election. In other words the weight of RandstadThis conurbation includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht and has a population of 7.5 million, compared with 17 million for the Netherlands as a whole. "CIt's a bit like the Ruhr in Germanycompares Erlijn Mulder, advisor at Utrecht's Office of International Affairs. But while the Randstad has a very strong impact, it is not an administrative region in the strict sense."More precisely, it is a symbolic demarcation around the country's four most powerful cities, its real economic lungs.
Situated in the centre of Holland, the Randstad is a road, port, airport and rail hub. Trains run continuously, every 10 to 15 minutes, and towns can be joined with easeThe OV Kaart can be used for all means of transport - bus, metro, tram or train. Above all, the four cities are almost equidistant from Schiphol, Europe's fourth largest airportwith 323 connections to 98 countries.
"The four towns have realised the importance of working together effectively, so that the strengths of each can be deployed while avoiding competition."says Erlijn Mulder. Each of the four towns has its own specific characteristics. Economic centre, Amsterdam remains the capital of services with its growing cluster of start-ups. Rotterdam, for its part, is pursuing its vocation as a logistics city with its port, the largest in Europe and the eighth largest in the world. But while its traditional activities - energy, chemicals and petrochemicals - still form its identity, the scientific sectors, particularly agri-food and clean tech, are gradually expanding, while its former docks have been converted into the Innovation District.
Randstad is of course playing the start-up card. But here too, every city wants to stand out from the crowd These include waste processing and logistics in Rotterdam, and life sciences and health in Utrecht, the most intellectual of the four with its brilliant university and one of the most highly skilled workforces in Europe.
Away from the start-up wave, The Hague, for its part, has established itself over more than a century as one of the world's leading business centres. the world justice centre home to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The administrative capital of the country, The Hague has developed a new "Special International Zone" over the last ten years, housing the majority of international organisations. Not so far removed from the business world, in fact.
