Territorial Review Copenhagen - Region Hovedstaden

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Ministry of Environment. Although the structural reform was presented as a
reform to create local units big enough for larger tasks, the City of
Copenhagen has in fact lost several of its previous responsibilities. In
addition, it became a municipality on a par with the other 97 municipalities,
without any special rights or responsibilities. This clearly differs from
practices in several OECD countries with dominant cities (Box 3.1).
Municipalities in the Capital Region (other than Copenhagen and
Frederiksberg) were granted more responsibilities, but they amalgamated to
a more limited extent than in Jutland. This calls into question whether their
local capacity is sufficient: in 2006, none of the municipalities in the Capital
Region was among the ten smallest; today, after the structural reform, half
of the ten smallest municipalities are located in the Capital Region.
Box 3.1. Special institutional arrangements for metropolitan areas
Several cities in federal countries are also federal states of their own. This is
for example the case for Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Vienna and Brussels. In
other countries, the capital city has a special status, with an institutional
organisation different from other municipalities‘, for example in the Czech
Republic, France, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Capitals
or metropolitan areas may also have a different status, giving them more
financial resources and rights or responsibilities. This is for example the case for
Tokyo and 17 designated cities that generally have more than 500 000 residents;
Seoul and six other metropolitan areas in Korea; 16 metropolitan municipalities
in Turkey; cities in the Netherlands with more than 100 000 inhabitants; and the
city of Toronto.
3.2 Intergovernmental co-ordination
3.2.1 Metropolitan co-ordination
The national government took many initiatives recognising how
important it was for Copenhagen to compete with other European countries
during the 1990s. The key elements of this strategy were recommended by
an Initiative Group for the Capital Region, formed in 1989 as a reaction to
economic decline in Copenhagen in the 1970s and 1980s. This group,
composed of regional stakeholders, recommended a number of
infrastructural projects, including the Øresund Bridge between Copenhagen
and Malmö, the development of Ørestad, the expansion of Copenhagen