The city centre revolves around the 'main' street called the Coolsingel. This is now a very wide street lined with retail stores and office buildings. In the past it was a narrow canal where boats loaded with coal used to ply their trade. There was even a windmill next to the canal. It has long since been filled in and a wide street put in place.

The process of filling in a canal is called demping in Dutch and a canal is said to be gedempt (filled in). This is particularly prevalent where, after the bombing, the city took most of the rubble from bombed out buildings and used it to fill in the canals because there was no other place to take all that rubble.

There are many examples of filled-in canals now being used as a street with the name of the street referring to the previous canal. For example, the street called the Gedempte Kielehaven translates to 'the filled-in Keil harbour'.