General factors and change

Over the past ten years Copenhagen has moved from a declining to a growing city. Adding to other growth factors, building the bridge to Sweden has widened the Greater Copenhagen Area leading to increased investment and economic growth. However, a number of local neighbourhoods are still highly segregated and suffer multiple problems of both a physical and socio-economic nature.

Policy responses

The city has over the past 20 years been developing regeneration methods - from traditional slum-clearance to a more integrated approach based on a time-limited multiple-stakeholder approach in a partnership with the municipality as the main stakeholder. The model is called Neighbourhood Regeneration or Kvarterløft. The aim is to improve the local neighbourhoods and to boost their development. The focus is not only on physical aspects but covers an integrated approach with social, economic and cultural mixing with physical interventions.

Another very strong aim is to involve local residents in the process thereby encouraging the local residents to take control and to continue the positive development of the neighbourhood. The local projects have a high degree of autonomy with local steering groups. Even though the process is initiated top-down, the approach is very much a bottom-up process where local working groups formulate the nature of the interventions. The work of these working groups then constitutes the ‘kvarterplan” the local action plan.

Financially, the programme is based on a government grant which is cofinanced by the local municipality. The main part of the money is still tied to physical changes especially for housing. This is mainly because of the tradition in Denmark for a heavily subsidised housing renewal scheme.

The study neighbourhood – Kongens Enghave

Kongens Enghave is located south west of the city centre. This neighbourhood had undergone social changes in the 70s and 80s. Because of de-industrialisation and suburbanisation from being attractive especially for families working in local industries, the neighbourhood with many small flats became less attractive and the neighbourhood experienced a social decline.

Issues / Challenges

There are three major regeneration issues, which are also reflected in the visions for the neighbourhood.

• Traffic – the area suffers from heavy traffic which both reduces the quality of life in the neighbourhood and acts as a barrier against contact with the rest of the city. But it has also become synonymous with the bad image of the neighbourhood, something local residents wanted to change.

• Housing – a housing stock of many small apartments and 50% social housing has led to a population of mainly single person households with social problems. The neighbourhood has a high degree of social tolerance and and is working actively to prevent gentrification.

• Employment – the neighbourhood has a low level of education compared with the rest of the city, and a large part of the population is without any connection to the labour market.

Progress

Work started in 1997 and very soon became focussed on the three major issues. Initiatives include housing projects (larger flats and changes in allocation policies), traffic projects to make roads safer but also to create a political awareness of the problems that were caused by the main traffic arteries going into the city centre through the neighbourhood.

One of the major challenges is the local development on the harbour front with a number of new international companies and the plans for the development of a new housing neigh-bourhood with up to 5,000 new houses. The new companies require skilled staff such as engineers, salespeople etc. Therefore, there is a clear qualification gap between local unemployed residents with low skills and the demands of the new companies. Through the regeneration project has been to involve the new companies in the local development. This started off with a wish to create local jobs through the Green Jobhouse, but has also led to cooperation on traffic issues and on housing.

The kvarterløft project in Kongens Enghave ended in December 2003. Preliminary evaluations show a lot of positive changes in the neighbourhood – both physically and quality of life. But only future monitoring will show whether the programme has acted as the catalyst for the future development in the neighbourhood.