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Open to all Floating idea of global city swim network

The Guardian Weekly

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July 04, 2025

Swimming in urban waterways should be a right, activists have said, as an international alliance aims to persuade politicians to clean up rivers so they can be used safely.

- By Ella Foote ROTTERDAM

Open to all Floating idea of global city swim network

At the world’s first Swimmable Cities summit in Rotterdam, more than 200 representatives from over 20 countries gathered and plunged into a local swimming spot that was once an industrial port.

The Swimmable Cities alliance was formed in response to the Seine cleanup for the 2024 Paris Olympics. The summit aims to build on this work and progress made in other European cities to create a global network of swimmable urban waterways.

Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven, once an industrial port on the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas, is now a designated swimming area with a floating pontoon park and the only legal place to swim in the centre of the city. Locals come for evening or lunchtime dips, children leap in and play.

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