Geografia d'Europa: material de suport

Geografia d'Europa: textos de suport

Polycentric development, global integration zones and a new urban-rural relationship: the Öresund Region

Mr. Birger OLOFSSON

Director

Øresundskomiteen, Copenhagen

Introduction

The Øresund region is a cross-border region located in the northern part of Europe, and can be regarded as a gateway for the Nordic Countries to the European continent. The Øresund region encompasses Zealand (Denmark) and Scania (Sweden) and has Copenhagen-Malmö as its hub. Next year the region will be physically integrated by the fixed link connecting Malmö and Copenhagen. To prepare for this historic event, but also to create the basis fundamental for a joint labour market among other things, the Öresund Committee was funded by regional and local authorities from both sides of the Øresund region in 1993.

The Öresund Committee

The Öresund Committee is a political cross-border cooperation in Øresund with the objectives to strengthen political and administrative cooperation within the region through the development of joint strategies that will eliminate or reduce respective differences, and establish social and cultural co-existence for the benefit of the citizens of Øresund. The development of the Øresund region is supported by European Commission through the INTERREG IIA programme, which is administrated by the Öresund Committee. The committee can be seen as a meeting place and platform for establishing concrete cooperation projects between organisations, companies and individuals in the region.

The Øresund Region - How do we respond?

Let me start by pointing at two important issues which were put on the global agenda at the end of the 1980's and the beginning of the 1990's, which have had influence on the way we plan our cities, metropoles and how we take care of our environment.

Firstly, in 1987 the United Nations published, under the Brundtland Commission, the report Our Common Future which put the notion of sustainable development on the global agenda. Today, most official documents concerning the environment and spatial planning refer to or deal with sustainability in some form. At a European level it was implemented in the 5th Environmental Action Programme, and in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, and further reinforced in the Treaty of Amsterdam which made the achievement of sustainable development one of the explicit objectives of the European Union.

Secondly, in the beginning of the 1990's the Ministers of Spatial Planing discussed a common frame of reference concerning the future spatial development of the European Union - named the ESDP (European Spatial Development Perspective). The framework was agreed at an informal conference of Ministers responsible for Spatial Planning in Leipzig in 1994, and the first official draft was published in 1997. The final version of the ESDP document was agreed in May 1999.

Besides recognising that the geographical patterns of activity and land use in Europe are influenced by economic, social and environmental trends, it also points out that the trends mainly occur at the continental or transnational level, though it is also seen at the regional and local level in many different areas within the Union. The trends represent both problems and threats but also opportunities.

In order to meet these problems, threats and opportunities, both the first official draft and the final ESDP document (May 1999) has three main goals:

economic and social cohesion;
sustainable development;
balanced competitiveness of the European territory.

To reach these goals a number of operational policy aims were formulated which was further broken down to specific policy options concerning the development of an integrated European spatial development policy:

more balanced and polycentric system of cities and a new urban-rural relationship

complementarity and cooperation between towns and cities (i.e. promotion of integrated spatial development strategies for clusters of towns and cities in cross-border areas and cooperation within networks of towns and cities at the transnatinal and European levels, and of smaller towns in sparsely populated rural areas)
the sustainable development of cities (i.e. exchange of experience on, and support for effective methods of reducing urban sprawl; alleviate excessive urban pressure in certain coastal areas)

parity of access to infrastructure and knowledge

better accessibility (i.e. improvement of infrastructure, including ground and air transport services)
diffusion of innovation and knowledge (i.e. support the establishment of technopoles and improvement of links between higher education)

prudent management and development of the natural and cultural heritage.
a framework for integrated spatial policy

a European spatial development agenda (need for policy coordination i.e. in EU border regions and their cities, including the development of gateway cities, multi-modality in Euro-corridors, parity of access to telecommunication facilities and intercontentental accessibility).
regional and local cooperation (i.e. cross-border cooperation and development of cross-border spatial strategies).

These issues among others are covered in The Metropolitan Magna Carta formulated by METREX, and we believe, that the Øresund region by the initiatives taken within our region do meet a number of the policy aims and options presented.

INTERREG II programme - EU support

As mentioned earlier the development of the Øresund region has been supported by the European Commission through the INTERREG II programme with a total budget of 13 MECU. The programme is administrated by the Öresund Committee and more than 700 project contacts of which 245 applications have been registered. 101 of the applications have been approved. The programme has therefore been a very important instrument for fulfilling the goals of the Öresund Committee, as the programme has stimulated cross-border cooperation in terms of initiating project initiatives. The Öresund Committee also initiates and runs its own projects, alone or together with other partners. Among these I would like to mention three important project activities:

The STRING project,
The environmental programme, and
The environmental benchmarking project

The STRING Project

In 1998 regional politicians initiated a long-term interregional co-operation between Land Schleswig-Holstein and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in Germany, the Danish Counties of Storstrøm and West Zealand and the Öresund Committee (representing the Greater Copenhagen Area in Denmark and Skåne in Sweden).

The starting point for the co-operation is a project called STRING (South-Western Baltic Transregional area - Inventing New Geography), which started in January 1999. The aim is during the following two and a half years to establish a common platform for regional politicians and permanent working groups for spatial planners.

The EU considers an interregional co-operation in the corridor Skåne-Zealand-northern Germany to be of high priority. This is confirmed by supporting the STRING-project with 672.000 Euro from the Interreg IIC Baltic Sea Area funding. The total budget of the STRING-project is 1.344.000 Euro.

The main aim of the STRING project is to establish a transnational development concept in order to be able to, not only exploit the common potentials the area has to offer, but also find sustainable solutions to common problems.

To obtain this, the project seeks to create:

Joint strategies within the field of spatial planning and development.
Networks of specialists, planners and decision-makers in different fields in order to strengthen the area's international competitiveness, promote sustainable development, economic and social cohesion, economic growth, increased trade and job crea-tion and safeguard the cultural and natural heritage.
A development of sustainable solutions for expected increase in mobility of peo-ple, goods and information.
An analysis of the relationship between rural and urban areas &endash; potentials and threats.

The Development of a Joint Environmental Programme

On behalf of the Danish and Swedish governments the Öresund Committee and its member organisations are developing a joint environmental programme in the period 1996 - 2000. The development of the programme is carried out in two phases - a survey phase and an implementing phase.

The objectives of the programme are to formulate joint environmental goals concerning the water and air quality. This focus is due to the fact that water and air are affected across the border with local, regional and global impacts. The programme will also provide suggestions for monitoring programmes concerning air and water quality. And lastly to formulate joint recommendations for the spatial development of the Øresund region.

During the survey phase it was further suggested by experts that we should add two issues. Firstly, a description of the state of the environment of the Øresund region, and secondly, a survey of the legislation and administrative procedures concerning environmental and spatial planning within the region. Being a cross-border region this implied a survey of two nations legislation systems.

Without going into great details I can inform you that we have witnessed a much greater cooperation between regional and local authorities concerning environmental and planning issues in this process.

The survey phase showed, that we have more or less the same environmental ambitions concerning water and air quality. However, the way we implement our policies and carry out our ambitions are different - especially in terms of planning competence.

Without going into great details I would like to mention that the regional planning competence is where the most significant differences are found. In Denmark the planning competence is carried out by counties and municipalities. In the Greater Copenhagen Area five counties makes regional plans with a duration of 12 years. The plans are revised in the planning process every 4th year. The five counties have an obligation to cooperate with each other. The municipalities have the responsibility of planning the cities, whereas the counties administrate the open land. This form of planing system does not to the same extend exist in Sweden.

In Sweden the planning legislation provides the possibility of making regional plans, however this is only seen in the Stockholm area. The County Administrative Board of Scania produces general planning strategies and objectives however it is the municipalities who have the planning competence. A new regional institution was established this year - Region Skåne (Scania). The establishment of this institution can be regarded as a recognition of the need of a regional planning institution.

Environmental Benchmarking Project

As a sign of the greater interest of joint environmental and planning exercises across the Sound, the Öresund Committee and its member organisations have in January 1999 initiated a joint environmental benchmarking project with the objective of finding out how the Øresund region stands in terms of environmental progress and status compared to other metropoles in Europe. The European Commission supports the initiative as the project is co-finansed by INTERREG II. The project will be carried out in a 2- year period ending in June 2001.

The project is structured in three phases:

phase 1 - defining the methodology, finding indicators and regions for comparison
phase 2 - the actual comparison of indicators and regions
phase 3 - best practice studies.

As indicated earlier, the results of the survey phase in the environmental programme recognise that differences concerning regional planning and formulating recommendations for joint strategies within the Øresund region are not an easy task. This calls for further cooperation. Not only within our own region, but also with other metropoles in Europe. We believe that to be able to fulfil some of the objectives set out in the ESDP document we recognise the need for greater cooperation between the metropoles of Europe. We find METREX as one of the organisations which can enhance this process in a very positive way with the benefit of all the metropoles in Europe.

Before I end, I would like to mention that the future INTERREG III is in the pipeline, and we will strongly support that spatial planning is one of the key elements of this programme, and thus stimulate a greater cooperation in this field.

Fuente: METREX
http://www.metrex.dis.strath.ac.uk/

Última actualització: 13 de junio de 2002