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■ STEFAN ANDERBERG / ERIC CLARK GreenSustainableØresundRegion O R E C O - B R A N D I N G C O P E N H A G E N A N D M A L M Ö ? A positive image of a city or region attracts people, investors, and enterprises. High-quality environment and local sustainability initiatives can be used for creating a positive image. A growing number of regions and cities around the world have in recent years attempted to exploit this opportunity through sustainable development strategies and innovative environmental initiatives combined with green image marketing. The Øresund region in southern Scandinavia is an example of an area that has gone to great effort to brand itself as green and sustainable. One of the central visions for the region when the Øresund cooperation was launched in 1994—after the decision to build a bridge across the sound (Øresund) connecting Denmark and Sweden—was to become “one of the cleanest big city regions in Europe.”1 This goal was representative of the new environmental policy agenda that had emerged in the early 1990s. Environmental efforts came to be considered important not only for the sake of health, quality of life, and sustainability, but also for stimulating growth and enhancing attractiveness of the region. Stimulating environmentally sustainable development signals that this is an advanced region and encourages environmental innovations and export of related products and services. Particularly the major cities Copenhagen and Malmö have developed sustainability profiles and eco-branding strategies. They are often mentioned, particularly in European contexts, as eco-city forerunners and achieve high rankings in international comparisons. In this chapter we discuss the recent development of the region and analyze the relation between environmental quality in the region and policy programs to undergird the image of Øresund, Copenhagen, and Malmö as green environmental forerunners of urban sustainability. Have the latter had marked impact on the environment? Or has eco-branding primarily capitalized on previous environmental improvement—much of which was exogenously driven? Is this a place where sustainable living is in the becoming? Our aim is not to provide exhaustive answers to these 592 ■ STEFAN ANDERBERG / ERIC CLARK questions, but more modestly to present an analysis supporting the relevance of these questions while indicating conclusions that more thorough analyses may reach. The Øresund Region Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark (540,000 inhabitants, with 1.7 million inhabitants in the capital region), while Malmö is the third largest city in Sweden (303,000 inhabitants, with 663,000 in the greater metropolitan area). Together with their surrounding regions (Zealand in Denmark and Scania in Sweden), they form the transboundary Øresund region with 3.7 million inhabitants in an area of 20,689 square kilometers (7,988 square miles)—the largest and most densely populated urban region in Scandinavia. Other cities in the region include Helsingborg (124,000, center of Northwestern Scania), Lund (103,000), and Kristianstad (77,000, center of Northeastern Scania) in Sweden, and Roskilde (81,000) and Elsinore (Helsingør, 61,000) in Denmark. The Øresund region accounts for 26 percent of Denmark’s and Sweden’s combined GNP, with an employed labor force of about 1.7 million (1.2 million on the Danish side, 500,000 on the Swedish side).2 The region is home of twelve universities, organizationally connected through Øresund Figure 1. Map of the Øresund region. GREEN SUSTAINABLE ØRESUND REGION ■ 593 University, with some 150,000 students, 6,500 PhD candidates and 12,000 researchers.3 Both sides of the Øresund region are rich in agricultural land. About half of Denmark’s and Sweden’s combined employment in pharmaceutical industries and in medical technological industries is located in the region, which also includes strong clusters of firms within life science, IT, design, logistics, food industries, and environmental technology. Copenhagen is in many ways the primary city in Scandinavia. Compared to Malmö and Scania, Greater Copenhagen has a much larger and more diversified labor market, especially in state and business administration, banking and finance, consultancy, culture and tourism, and has in recent years become an important labor market for the population of Scania. Crossing the Øresund was greatly facilitated by the opening of the bridge in 2000. In 2007 some 25 million trips were made across the sound via the bridge (nearly 10 million of which were by train), about twice as many trips as in 2001.4 The Breakthrough of Sustainability Goals It was not surprising that sustainability became...

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