Flexible urban governance. The case of Copenhagen's recent waterfront development

Abstract

In this paper, the most recent wave of Copenhagen's waterfront development is analyzed and interpreted in the context of broader economic tendencies and political strategies. Recent events illuminate relationships among politicians, bureaucrats and capital to regulate an accumulation process that is highly intertwined with international, national as well as urban interests. Beginning in the late 1980s, the national state, the local state and the port authority, undertook a number of planning and policy initiatives to create a process for transforming Copenhagen's waterfront. When contradictions from the logic of profit maximization became apparent and threatened to de‐rail long term economic growth, a new ad hoc and ‘flexible’ process of urban governance was established to get development back on track. Senior politicians created a so‐called ‘Vision Group’ that functioned as a ‘meta‐steering’ committee providing direction to local development by identifying a development approach that attempted to resolve, at least temporarily, tensions among global market tendencies and the interests of the main actors. In this way, the Vision Group achieved its political purpose to create a shared vision and a discourse for the development of the waterfront. The new strategy was effective at various scales of governance, but circumvented local planning practices.

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