Galland EPS 2012 - VBN

1374 D. Galland
The larger cities have increasingly been able to detect that problems become more
complex and more difficult to solve by known means. The most notable is that the
larger cities have been hit hard by unemployment during the last 10 years. Unemployment
is now above the national average. Therefore it is important that these
cities engage in promising business policy. (Ministry of the Environment, 1987,
p. 10, author’s translation)
The last national planning report of the decade pointed towards a major and radical shift
in Danish national planning. The 1989 report entitled “The Danish regional picture now
and in the future” (Det regionale Danmarksbillede nu og i fremtiden) depicted how the
country was to develop on a geographically differentiated basis, stressing the new challenges
to be faced when entering the Single European Market and the need for adopting
an international position. The report was clearly strategic, as it served as a preamble for
subsequent national planning reports.
Downloaded by [Daniel Galland] at 07:22 25 July 2012
It is the government’s view that the earlier form of development pursued by the
nationwide goal of equality is outdated. The future must be guided by regional
political activities that have diversity. Attention must be given to harnessing the
development potential of the regions to strengthen Denmark’s position internationally.
(Ministry of the Environment, 1989, p. 5, emphasis added, author’s translation)
The diversity goal takes its point of departure in the government’s liberal ideology and
its agenda to reform distribution policy resulting on the push to stimulate private and local
solutions rather than the former public and national ones (Nielsen & Olsen, 1990). Moreover,
diversity seemed to reflect the national government’s desires towards promoting
deregulation and changing its sectoral foci (Jørgensen & Tonboe, 1993). This can be illustrated,
for instance, by the shift away from manufacturing to tourism and transport. The
shift from equality to diversity was similarly influenced by the change in focus within
regional policy in Western Europe, which in the 1980s shifted from regional balance to
regional development programmes.
In the 1980s, national planning discourse was influenced by the neoliberal climate
that swept most of the West. The Keynesian welfare state policy was challenged
under the slogans of de-centralization and modernization. (Jensen & Jørgensen,
2000, p. 34)
It was the view of the government by the end of the decade that the expansion of the
manufacturing industry and population growth had become more equally distributed
within Denmark as a result of policy measures that were adopted during previous years.
As a result of this perception, the need for regional support to sustain peripheral areas
was no longer necessary. This position asserted that pursuing equal development
through a hierarchy of urban settlements would rather imply little diversification
amongst Danish regions and thereby an obsolete strategy for regional development.
Therefore, in support of the new diversity and internationalization agenda, the liberal–
conservative coalition government established Copenhagen to be the metropolitan
centre upon which the country would rely on to meet its redefined national goals
(Ministry of the Environment, 1989, p. 34). This assertion was equally sustained by the