Nykøbing Falster

Abstract

This project will be discussing some of the issues and challenges exhibited in the outskirt areas of Denmark, and will primarily be focussing on geographical urban areas on the fringe, and in particular on the challenges and opportunities that face Nykøbing Falster, located south of Zealand and south of the Capital, Copenhagen. We will be including a discursive angle in our project, trying to analyse if the dominant discourse set by the current discussion in the national media, depicting “udkantsdanmark” as areas that are in decline, with high unemployment, low social service levels, material and physical decay of buildings, social and material resources, populated by less educated people with limited opportunities to find employment or educational opportunities locally, is influencing local discourse in Nykøbing. Through our report we will be including this discursive angle, challenging it, and through interviews done in Nykøbing, we will be drawing on qualitative data, which to some extent disproves that people in Nykøbing feel inferior. By also drawing on cases from a wider European context, our aim is to relate the Danish situation to the broader situation in Europe, where regional development and alternative development strategies are becoming increasingly necessary to support aging and economically challenged urban communities in the fringes of Europe. By drawing on examples from Europe, and by studying the case of Nykøbing, we hope to shed light on the possibilities and alternative policy pursuits, which are possible even in challenging circumstances. Furthermore, by examining 8 Danish cities located in the outskirts of Denmark, said to be in “udkantsdanmark”, we will be drawing from experiences in a national context, and set to compare, discuss and relate the relevance to the case of Nykøbing, also relating the experiences made in Nykøbing back to the National, and European context. We will also be discussing national, regional and municipal development strategies and planned visions of the future. Drawing on Patsy Healey and other urban planning theorists, we aim to discuss the current development plans for the region and particularly Guldborgsund Kommune, where Nykøbing is located, and include a discussion of the utopianism by which some of these plans and visions have been formulated. Most of the visions which are being drawn by “Region Sjælland” and Guldborgsund Kommune are very dependent of the development of the “Femernbælt” zone, which is an area on both the German side and the Danish side of the Baltic, set to be connected by tunnel in 2020. We will discuss the dependence on the “femernbælt” project, in light of limited resources, and put forward some alternative potentials that Guldborgsund Kommune and Nykøbing could pursue as to diversify their vision of the future, to make it more likely that some of these will be realised.