The DR Concert Hall, right, part of the new Danish TV and radio complex, in the Orestad suburb of Copenhagen.
COPENHAGEN — How does a city expand and, at the same time, reduce car use and emissions? Officials in Copenhagen believe part of the answer is to build and extend a modern mass transit network while trying to eliminate the need for commuting altogether.
Related
I.H.T. Special Report: Smart Cities: Japanese Developers Find Growing Interest in Homes With Solar Panels (March 6, 2012)
Copenhagen, with a population of 1.2 million in the city and its suburbs, will need to find homes for a projected 100,000 new residents by the year 2025.
Fortunately, the city still has room to grow.
In 2001, the first building in a new master-planned suburb called Orestad, south of downtown and named for the Oresund, the channel separating eastern Denmark from Sweden, was completed. Work on preparing a second major site, Nordhavn, in the docks north of the city, has just begun on land freed up by the departure of heavy industry.
The Copenhagen City and Port Authority, a foundation owned jointly by the city of Copenhagen and the Danish state, is tasked with developing both plans at a cost of several billion dollars.
But the completion of Orestad and the commencement of Nordhavn are coming at a time of great uncertainty in the Danish and global economies. The European Commission has cut its growth forecast for Denmark to 1 percent this year from 1.4 percent.
Although new buildings are being put up at a slower pace than before the financial crises — Denmark is part of the European Union but not the euro zone — building in Orestad has not stopped. And officials here say it is because they must grow or stagnate.
“When the development of the new town on the Orestad site was decided by the Danish parliament in the early 1990s, the politicians realized that Copenhagen lacked the dynamic and attractions to function as the driving force for Denmark and to be able to compete with other metropolitan cities in Europe,” said Rita Justesen, chief planner at the City and Port Authority.
Orestad, a 310-hectare, or 766-acre, development, was meant to help change that, introducing new energy into this windswept city between the North Sea and the Baltic.
“We had 310 hectares on the edge of the city with no existing buildings,” Ms. Justesen said. “It could act as a testing ground for new urban and architectural ideas. For example, we had the possibility of building high-rise blocks which were not allowed elsewhere in the city.”
Copenhagen’s latest reinvention — there have been a number through the centuries — started in earnest when an international architectural competition was announced in 1994 to develop Orestad, then an empty strip of land about 600 meters, or 2,000 feet, wide and 5 kilometers, or 3.1 miles, long in the flatlands between the southern fringe of the capital and its international airport. A plan submitted by Arkki, a Finnish studio, was selected.
There was also a synergy to be tapped: in 1995, construction started on a combined road and rail bridge-tunnel to connect Copenhagen with the Swedish city of Malmo across the strait. The link, the longest such structure in Europe, gave the Danish capital the chance to enlarge its sphere of economic influence to embrace Malmo, a prosperous city of just over 300,000 people.
The link opened in 2000 and Orestad is ideally situated to benefit, as it straddles the highway that connects Jutland, the peninsula on which mainland Denmark sits, to Stockholm via Malmo.
Essentially, the City and Port Authority had two main goals: getting enterprises to set up in the city instead of on the outer fringe of Copenhagen — or abroad — and encouraging young families to stay in Copenhagen rather than buying a home in the distant outskirts.
Businesses have moved into Orestad, but the plan has not yet proved hugely successful in attracting new residents, though the wider malaise of the Danish property sector is undoubtedly a key factor: average real estate prices in Denmark have dropped about 15 percent since 2007, when the market was at its peak.
sábado, 23 de marzo de 2013
A Dream Grows in Copenhagen
By NICK FOSTER - Published: March 5, 2012
The DR Concert Hall, right, part of the new Danish TV and radio complex, in the Orestad suburb of Copenhagen.
COPENHAGEN — How does a city expand and, at the same time, reduce car use and emissions? Officials in Copenhagen believe part of the answer is to build and extend a modern mass transit network while trying to eliminate the need for commuting altogether.
Related
I.H.T. Special Report: Smart Cities: Japanese Developers Find Growing Interest in Homes With Solar Panels (March 6, 2012)
Copenhagen, with a population of 1.2 million in the city and its suburbs, will need to find homes for a projected 100,000 new residents by the year 2025.
Fortunately, the city still has room to grow.
In 2001, the first building in a new master-planned suburb called Orestad, south of downtown and named for the Oresund, the channel separating eastern Denmark from Sweden, was completed. Work on preparing a second major site, Nordhavn, in the docks north of the city, has just begun on land freed up by the departure of heavy industry.
The Copenhagen City and Port Authority, a foundation owned jointly by the city of Copenhagen and the Danish state, is tasked with developing both plans at a cost of several billion dollars.
But the completion of Orestad and the commencement of Nordhavn are coming at a time of great uncertainty in the Danish and global economies. The European Commission has cut its growth forecast for Denmark to 1 percent this year from 1.4 percent.
Although new buildings are being put up at a slower pace than before the financial crises — Denmark is part of the European Union but not the euro zone — building in Orestad has not stopped. And officials here say it is because they must grow or stagnate.
“When the development of the new town on the Orestad site was decided by the Danish parliament in the early 1990s, the politicians realized that Copenhagen lacked the dynamic and attractions to function as the driving force for Denmark and to be able to compete with other metropolitan cities in Europe,” said Rita Justesen, chief planner at the City and Port Authority.
Orestad, a 310-hectare, or 766-acre, development, was meant to help change that, introducing new energy into this windswept city between the North Sea and the Baltic.
“We had 310 hectares on the edge of the city with no existing buildings,” Ms. Justesen said. “It could act as a testing ground for new urban and architectural ideas. For example, we had the possibility of building high-rise blocks which were not allowed elsewhere in the city.”
Copenhagen’s latest reinvention — there have been a number through the centuries — started in earnest when an international architectural competition was announced in 1994 to develop Orestad, then an empty strip of land about 600 meters, or 2,000 feet, wide and 5 kilometers, or 3.1 miles, long in the flatlands between the southern fringe of the capital and its international airport. A plan submitted by Arkki, a Finnish studio, was selected.
There was also a synergy to be tapped: in 1995, construction started on a combined road and rail bridge-tunnel to connect Copenhagen with the Swedish city of Malmo across the strait. The link, the longest such structure in Europe, gave the Danish capital the chance to enlarge its sphere of economic influence to embrace Malmo, a prosperous city of just over 300,000 people.
The link opened in 2000 and Orestad is ideally situated to benefit, as it straddles the highway that connects Jutland, the peninsula on which mainland Denmark sits, to Stockholm via Malmo.
Essentially, the City and Port Authority had two main goals: getting enterprises to set up in the city instead of on the outer fringe of Copenhagen — or abroad — and encouraging young families to stay in Copenhagen rather than buying a home in the distant outskirts.
Businesses have moved into Orestad, but the plan has not yet proved hugely successful in attracting new residents, though the wider malaise of the Danish property sector is undoubtedly a key factor: average real estate prices in Denmark have dropped about 15 percent since 2007, when the market was at its peak.
The DR Concert Hall, right, part of the new Danish TV and radio complex, in the Orestad suburb of Copenhagen.
COPENHAGEN — How does a city expand and, at the same time, reduce car use and emissions? Officials in Copenhagen believe part of the answer is to build and extend a modern mass transit network while trying to eliminate the need for commuting altogether.
Related
I.H.T. Special Report: Smart Cities: Japanese Developers Find Growing Interest in Homes With Solar Panels (March 6, 2012)
Copenhagen, with a population of 1.2 million in the city and its suburbs, will need to find homes for a projected 100,000 new residents by the year 2025.
Fortunately, the city still has room to grow.
In 2001, the first building in a new master-planned suburb called Orestad, south of downtown and named for the Oresund, the channel separating eastern Denmark from Sweden, was completed. Work on preparing a second major site, Nordhavn, in the docks north of the city, has just begun on land freed up by the departure of heavy industry.
The Copenhagen City and Port Authority, a foundation owned jointly by the city of Copenhagen and the Danish state, is tasked with developing both plans at a cost of several billion dollars.
But the completion of Orestad and the commencement of Nordhavn are coming at a time of great uncertainty in the Danish and global economies. The European Commission has cut its growth forecast for Denmark to 1 percent this year from 1.4 percent.
Although new buildings are being put up at a slower pace than before the financial crises — Denmark is part of the European Union but not the euro zone — building in Orestad has not stopped. And officials here say it is because they must grow or stagnate.
“When the development of the new town on the Orestad site was decided by the Danish parliament in the early 1990s, the politicians realized that Copenhagen lacked the dynamic and attractions to function as the driving force for Denmark and to be able to compete with other metropolitan cities in Europe,” said Rita Justesen, chief planner at the City and Port Authority.
Orestad, a 310-hectare, or 766-acre, development, was meant to help change that, introducing new energy into this windswept city between the North Sea and the Baltic.
“We had 310 hectares on the edge of the city with no existing buildings,” Ms. Justesen said. “It could act as a testing ground for new urban and architectural ideas. For example, we had the possibility of building high-rise blocks which were not allowed elsewhere in the city.”
Copenhagen’s latest reinvention — there have been a number through the centuries — started in earnest when an international architectural competition was announced in 1994 to develop Orestad, then an empty strip of land about 600 meters, or 2,000 feet, wide and 5 kilometers, or 3.1 miles, long in the flatlands between the southern fringe of the capital and its international airport. A plan submitted by Arkki, a Finnish studio, was selected.
There was also a synergy to be tapped: in 1995, construction started on a combined road and rail bridge-tunnel to connect Copenhagen with the Swedish city of Malmo across the strait. The link, the longest such structure in Europe, gave the Danish capital the chance to enlarge its sphere of economic influence to embrace Malmo, a prosperous city of just over 300,000 people.
The link opened in 2000 and Orestad is ideally situated to benefit, as it straddles the highway that connects Jutland, the peninsula on which mainland Denmark sits, to Stockholm via Malmo.
Essentially, the City and Port Authority had two main goals: getting enterprises to set up in the city instead of on the outer fringe of Copenhagen — or abroad — and encouraging young families to stay in Copenhagen rather than buying a home in the distant outskirts.
Businesses have moved into Orestad, but the plan has not yet proved hugely successful in attracting new residents, though the wider malaise of the Danish property sector is undoubtedly a key factor: average real estate prices in Denmark have dropped about 15 percent since 2007, when the market was at its peak.
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