METROPOLIS AT THE ÖRESUND

WITH THE HELP OF THE ÖRESUND BRIDGE AND THE NEW CITY TUNNEL, MALMÖ IN SWEDEN AND COPENHAGEN IN DENMARK ARE GROWING TOGETHER.

Twenty years ago the local daily paper “Sydsvenskan” launched a campaign to instill a sense of self-confidence in the people of Malmö. In the city with a high proportion of foreign residents, the paper had T-shirts printed with the message: “If you’ve seen Malmö, you’ve seen the world.” A second batch of T-shirts promptly appeared in the neighboring university town of Lund bearing the derisive reply: “If you’ve seen Lund, you don’t have to see Malmö.” A trivial incident, but one that shows how Swedes used to feel about the city. Lund is learned, Gothenburg means business and Stockholm is stately, whereas Malmö was always the proletarian parvenu. In the early sixties the Kockums shipyard launched a new ship every month, but by the seventies the industry was in terminal decline: the parvenu was reduced to a problem.

SELF-ASSURED CITY OF CULTURE
No one scoffs at Malmö anymore. The days of factory closures and high unemployment are gone. The city radiates self-confidence: In the past fifteen years it has undergone a process of change from which other European cities with aging industries could learn a thing or two. Malmö has shed its working class image and blossomed into a postindustrial university, services and cultural hub full of life and dynamism. Once the city fathers realized in the nineties that Malmö’s industrial days were gone for good, they set about developing new infrastructure to promote the service sector, culture and education. The reawakening acquired a visible dimension in 1998 when Malmö opened the doors to its university and the cityscape was reshaped with the initial influx of 5,000 students. There are now 23,000 young people studying at the university.

The millennium saw the opening of the Öresund Bridge which was to become a major factor in Malmö’s future. Commuting to nearby Copenhagen had previously meant a tiresome journey by ferry across the intervening waterway. But the bridge brought Denmark and Sweden closer together. The comparatively low rents on the Swedish side attracted Danish families and Malmö’s rejuvenation continued.

In 2001 the international housing exhibition Bo01 kick-started the revitalization of the Västra Hamnen, or Western Harbor. On the site of the former Kockums shipyard, internationally renowned architects began to create prestige projects. Among them was Malmö’s newest landmark, the “Turning Torso” by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. The 190-meter apartment building with its twisting facade clad in white aluminum is Sweden’s tallest building, a “symbol of our city’s reawakening,” says Hans Olsson. As a city planner, Olsson played a major role in the Western Harbor development. Now retired, he conducts tourists around the prestigious district. These days, colorful lunchhour crowds gather on the Western Harbor promenade: students from the nearby university institutes, IT experts from the newly arrived software companies, and pensioners who can afford an apartment here with a view across the water. Tankers and container vessels ply the waterway while the majestic Öresund Bridge— almost eight kilometers in length with its huge pylons and steel cables stretched like the strings of a harp—reaches out towards Copenhagen. At peak times, trains shuttle across the bridge to Malmö every ten minutes. They enter the new City Tunnel and travel underground across the city to the main station. The city’s public transportation system is accessible from the new train route via two additional underground stations. With the opening of the tunnel, which Bilfinger Berger played a key role in building, the city centers of Malmö and Copenhagen are now just 30 mi - nutes apart. Twenty thousand commuters cross the Öresund every day, a number that is forecast to nearly double within the next ten years. Malmö and Copenhagen are increasingly growing together into a single metropolitan area. Malmö itself is also growing steadily—by almost seven percent in 2010 alone—and is rejuvenating itself in the process. Most newcomers are under thirty and the birth rate is high. A record five thousand children were born here last year. Just recently Malmö’s population topped the 300,000 mark. Its citizens celebrated the fact in March 2011 with a huge party in the Stortoget, the central square in the Old Town. Many of the guests were children, and the day was celebrated not with free beer, but with balloons and lots of chocolate cake.

Text: Clemens Bomsdorf, Photos: Uffe Weng
Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2011