Lessons learned exploring urbanity and questioning approaches to redevelopment , through dialogue , public meetings and citizen participation , in Copenhagen ’ s inner city and deprived suburbs . Supertanker : in search of urbanity (original) (raw)
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2008
This article contrasts the intentions and outcomes of the publicly instigated and supported urban renewal of Copenhagen's Inner Vesterbro district. Apart from physically upgrading the decaying buildings, the municipality's aim was to include the inhabitants in the urban renewal process and, seemingly, to prevent the dislocation of people from the neighbourhood. However, due to ambiguous policies, the workings of the property market and the lack of sufficient deflecting mechanisms, middle-class inhabitants are now replacing the high concentration of socioeconomically vulnerable people that characterised Vesterbro before the urban renewal. This process may appear 'gentle', but it is nonetheless an example of how state and market interact to produce gentrification with 'traumatic' consequences for individuals and the city as a socially just space.
Creative Copenhagen: Globalization, urban governance and social change
European Planning Studies, 2001
The introduction of 'creativity' and the 'creative city' in imagineering Copenhagen and in strategies for developing its urban competitiveness is analysed from a perspective on relations between processes of globalization, developments in urban government/governance and social geographic change. This perspective problematizes what on the surface seems to be an unequivocally positive quality ('creative') and goal ('creativity'). We argue there is a need to recognize the social costs of developments that are glossed over by the creative city rhetoric, including diminished representative democracy, social and geographic polarization and considerable displacement of the marginalized.
Nordic Journal of Urban Studies
Responding to Urban Challenges in the Twenty-First Century, 2024
Responding to Urban Challenges in the Twenty-First Century At the Nordic Geographers Meeting (NGM) in Copenhagen, June 2024, the Nordic Journal of Urban Studies hosted its inaugural lecture. Dr. Vasna Ramasar, from the Division of Human Ecology at Lund University, shared her insights on responding to urban challenges in the twenty-first century. Her presentation was followed by a conversation with Dr. Anders Lund Hansen, from the journal's editorial board who was the session organizer/chair, and Claus Wilhelmsen, a Danish urban planner and geographer. As a point of departure, the session and this commentary are inspired by the founding editors' seminal 2021 NJUS article (Haarstad et al., 2021). Using a decolonial and feminist perspective, Dr. Ramasar reflected on the current state of urban landscapes worldwide, highlighted the underlying causes of our most pressing urban and global challenges, and articulated a feminist response for a new form of urbanism. The dialogue between Ramasar, Wilhelmsen, Lund Hansen and the session participants is summarized here to inspire further discussion, debate, and action. The Environmental, Climate and Lived Experience of Urban Challenges Urban spaces around the world are characterized by unsustainable and unequal socioecological relationships (Bueno-Suárez & Coq-Huelva, 2020). Modern cities exceed their ecological footprints, with overconsumption of resources being a hallmark of contemporary
Solving local problems through local involvement? Experiences from Danish Urban Regeneration
2014
Over the last decades, the Danish Urban Regeneration Program has – in line with public well-fare politics in general increasingly turned towards efforts to generate more local involvement in solving local urban problems. Whereas former periods of urban regeneration have been mainly based on top-down approaches or massive public subsidies, the public regeneration schemes from the last decade have increasingly emphasized the need for involving local actors in the urban regeneration e.g. through partnerships, network building, involvement and participation of local actors and institutions, and financially based of voluntary work, local co-financing etc. Based on a number of evaluations and studies of the Danish Urban Regeneration scheme carried out over the last decade, the paper will discuss to which degree the Danish urban regeneration scheme has been successful in this transformation towards a new agenda, and what can be learned from the development so far. Although ‘local involveme...
The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration
The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration, 2013
From the Inner Harbor in Baltimore to the Canary Wharf in London Docklands, from Darling Harbor in Sydney to the Victoria and Albert Waterfront in Cape Town, from the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to Wan Chai in Hong Kong, it seems that no city is complete without a revitalized waterfront. Not only are such developments seemingly ubiquitous but they often bear a striking resemblance to each other, suggesting that a formula or 'instant mix' recipe for regeneration is being followed. Increasingly, this trend is not just restricted to post-industrial cities in the West but is also seen in the fast-developing economies of Latin America, the Gulf States and South East Asia. This chapter explores this global phenomenon by focusing on two interrelated issues: how this ubiquity can be characterized and understood, and the international mobility of regeneration ideas and practices. The chapter begins by outlining a brief history of waterfront regeneration and some general characteristics and trends. It then goes on to critically explore-through a number of case studies-two ways in which the global reach of waterfront development has been understood in the literature, namely (1) as the international transfer of 'models', or (2) as the expression of a universal urban policy, linked to competitiveness and neoliberal urbanization. The chapter concludes by arguing that an alternative analysis based on the concept and practices of assemblage-the bringing together of different elements, actors and 'ideas from elsewhere' in the creation of urban space-can play a useful role in framing studies of waterfront regeneration. In particular, it argues that such an alternative analysis can ensure that the interplay between the local and the global and the tensions and contradictions often found within such schemes are recognized.