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A country's internal migration is often explained using a life-course perspective. When a new academic year begins, study cities hope to attract a good portion of new students. In Denmark, the major trend is that young people leave the western part of the country to study in larger cities in the eastern part. This paper examines a much less extensive reverse flow of students who move to Esbjerg in western Denmark to study. Using interviews with 30 students, this paper analyses how this counter-movement is experienced by young students themselves and perceived by their friends. Based on the literature on the transformation of places and regional representation and attractiveness, this study shows the concurrent presence of opposing trends. On the one hand, the interviewees describe Esbjerg as a great town with friendly people, good study opportunities, etc.; i.e. they experience the city positively. On the other hand, their friends disagree and criticize Esbjerg without having much substantive knowledge on which to base their negative perceptions. These findings are discussed in relation to value attached to places, views on the size of towns connected to life modes among students, and opportunities for places to transform their identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clusters influence the way firms cooperate, organize and compete, but clusters and their related benefits rarely come spontaneously in a straight line of expansion. It is argued that clusters typically develop in accordance with a life cycle, which includes an evolutionary sequence of steps where actors from the private and public sectors are engaged and where one or more cluster facilitators are coordinating and promoting the process. In the literature, the role of cluster facilitators has almost exclusively been described as static, leaving a research gap about how this particular role changes during the life cycle of clusters. Inspired by that research gap, this paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between cluster development and cluster facilitation. It brings forward a framework for describing and discussing the exact changes taking place in the role of cluster facilitators, including the facilitation focus, competencies and tasks that they make use of along the cluster life cycle. This investigation is based on a multiple case study consisting of nine different clusters located in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contributes to an understanding of the nature of financial constraints in a less developed region in Denmark, North Jutland. While based on a general discussion of characteristics of particularly constrained firms, the paper focuses more specifically and empirically on firms' perception of whether there is a financing gap with regard to innovation financing in the region and whether this situation has changed over time. Specifically, the extent to which firms point to financial constraints on their innovation projects and what type of firm sees financing as a constraint. The paper uses a longitudinal study of how a panel of more than 400 firms report financial constraints in six successive surveys. The paper also contributes with a closer linking of innovation and potential financial constraints. The results show that, while lack of external finance is an obstacle to innovation in a relatively small share of firms, the situation worsened in 2002-2004. Financing of innovation is increasingly seen as relatively important and an actual obstacle to innovation. Contrary to expectations, small and/or innovative firms did not differ much in their assessment of financial constraints before 2002. However, size seemed to matter in 2002-2004. Innovative firms were more financially constrained in 2003-2004. Our results indicate both a change in the degree to which financial constraints is a hindrance to innovation and also a change in the specific type of firm with the most severe financing constraint. Therefore one policy implication is that a range of different instruments may be needed if all firms should be targeted with an offer to support innovation activities. Additionally, a prerequisite for policy-makers to react to such changes is a close monitoring of the market development for which an extensive and frequent survey is an important instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the changing economic geographies of the outer city of Copenhagen. The outer city is not a well-defined place but can be understood as a set of processes transforming the urban economic landscape outside the built-up area. Several central and interrelated economic processes transform the outer city. The paper examines the changing industrial dynamics and location spaces within the framework of geographical proximity and relation propinquity in order to examine the social and cultural embeddedness of location. Imaginary spaces of location are the social constructs of the firm (of the interviewee representing the firm). They are representations of the perception, experience and interpretation of the location of the firm. The imaginary spaces of firms in the outer city are different from those of the firms in the built-up area, and a survey points to the fact that multiple rationalities are important in order to understand industrial location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent financial and economic crisis had substantial but spatially differentiated impacts on growth. However, there is still a lot left to be understood about the local aspects of the crisis. One of these aspects is its socio-economic consequences. This paper investigates local socio-economic change to Danish towns from 2008 to 2013, with a focus on the impact of local labour market (LLM) structures on change. Socio-economic change in towns is measured both directly as mean income and employment growth, and indirectly as population and human capital growth. The paper relies on micro-data and uses robust regression to generate results. Several findings are presented, but the two main conclusions are: first, the LLM structures of towns still influence local socio-economic development; and, second, towns experience better socio-economic development if they are in close proximity to a larger labour market and/or have a large ratio of commuters in the working population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the geographic patterns of employment growth and employment polarization in small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) in Denmark during the rise of the new economy. The geography of employment polarization in Danish cities is examined using register-based employment data on occupations and wages divided into the public and private sectors in the period 1993–2006; it therefore covers a long period of transformation and growth in the Danish economy. We conclude that employment growth is characterized by employment polarization combined with growth in low- and high-wage employment and a decline in medium-wage employment. However, these patterns of polarization differ across the public and private sectors, as well as by geography. While local labour market (LLM) size, city position and city specialization influence the geography of private-sector employment growth and polarization, municipal population and composition influence the geography of public-sector growth patterns across wage levels. Finally, public and private employment are positively associated within SMCs, predominantly driven by the positive association between public employment and private-sector low-wage employment. However, public employment is not associated with an increase in private low-wage employment in more remote areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although public participation has become an integrated part of planning practice, experience and documents literature still document difficulties in implementing participatory planning processes that provide arenas where citizens can truly influence planning. Based on a combination of institutional theory and action research methodology, this paper focuses on the institutional boundaries to introducing participatory practices by exploring openings and closures to the adoption of participatory planning processes by the Danish energy transmission system operator (TSO). Public participation in the Danish energy sector is characterized by complex institutional arrangements. The study shows how institutional boundaries are perceived by planners and how openings and closures can be identified and developed in an action research approach. The study reveals that citizen involvement has the potential to influence existing power structures but is highly challenged by an instrumentialised and sector-divided planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essential feature associated with the rise of the knowledge economy has been the increasing focus on the importance of human capital as a precondition for economic growth. Human capital has been found to have a positive impact on the economic growth of high-tech industries, however, the influence of human capital on the development of low-tech industries is yet to be analysed. This paper provides such an examination of low-tech industries based on an analysis of employment data within manufacturing industries in Denmark in the period 1993- 2006. The findings highlight, first, that human capital appears to be equally important for economic development in low-tech industries and, second, that the divide between the large urban regions, especially Copenhagen, and the rest of the country plays the primary role in explaining the geography of human capital. These findings stress the relevance of a broad conception of the knowledge economy which goes beyond high-tech industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is argued that in order to overcome the limitations of canonical path dependence and new path creation theories that arise from the different ontological approaches of economics and sociology, a hybrid socio-economic theory is required that examines the contributions of intelligent agents to the creation of new technological pathways in conditions of path dependence. The main aim of such a theory is to explain the processes by which agents may collectively contribute to the emergence of new technological pathways and overcome the barriers confronting them as a result of the evolution of historical forces that establish the path-dependent trajectories of contemporary technologies. The arguments are illustrated empirically by analysing the roles of inventors and innovation pioneers located in economic niches together with the diffusion of new technologies to the attainment of critical mass and the creation of new pathways. The roles and processes engaged in by such actors, and the path-dependent barriers confronting them, are illustrated using the historical creation the renewable energy technological pathway in wind power in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been a feature of the past 30 years or so that individual sovereign states have been increasingly willing to partially set aside their own interests in favour of international treaties on pollution control and wildlife protection. It is the political will of the government signatories to such agreements that is the key to successful implementation as that political will provides the legitimate enforceable authority that is necessary to ensure compliance. This paper examines a trilateral agreement made by the Governments of Denmark, Germany and Holland for the protection and management of the Wadden Sea—one of Europe's most important wildlife sites. The examination of that agreement explores the key mechanisms used for its implementation and, in the case of the Wadden Sea, those mechanisms include the operation of key European Union environmental Directives. The paper finds major differences in approach and application of the Birds, Habitats and Environmental Impact Assessment Directives across the Wadden Sea region and argues that these differences undermine the trilateral agreements made by the three governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs path creation as a lens to follow the emergence of the Danish wind turbine cluster. Supplier competencies, regulations, user preferences and a market for wind power did not pre-exist; all had to emerge in a tranformative manner involving multiple actors and artefacts. Competencies emerged through processes and mechanisms such as co-creation that implicated multiple learning processes. The process was not an orderly linear one as emergent contingencies influenced the learning processes. An implication is that public policy to catalyse clusters cannot be based on an assumption that linear learning dynamics will unfold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban growth and development have always been associated with specific nodes in an urban system. This association, however, does not make much sense in a world where the functional areas of many large cities have merged to form continuous urban landscapes. When more than 85% of a country's population is urbanized, the process of urbanization as commonly understood has come to an end, so that traditional means of analysis no longer suffice. Within a Danish context, this paper discusses limits to traditional urban analyses based on individual urban places and an urban rural dichotomy. It argues for the use of an alternative concept related to localization within a larger urban landscape and goes on to demonstrate how the pattern of urban growth in Denmark over the last 25 years may be explained by increasing mobility and improved access to labour markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culture and creativity as drivers of development are established features of the urban policy agenda. This article examines the interplay of culture, creativity and city planning using the example of Copenhagen, Denmark. Denmark presents an interesting example because whilst it has a tradition for linking culture with urban economic boosterism, recent research has suggested a social emphasis in its more contemporary urban cultural policies. The paper argues that the arrival of creativity upon the urban agenda has abruptly altered this policy context. Both culture and creativity have become central to attempts to stimulate the cultural and creative industries and to promote the city at an international level, attracting investment and the "Creative Class". In tracing this development, the article discusses potential changes to the planning system designed to facilitate Copenhagen's transformation to a creative city and points to the potential impacts of these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the spatial-economic transformation of the Scandinavian Øresund Region over the last decades with a focus on the role of place marketing (branding) in this transition process. Although the Øresund Region, in which Copenhagen and Malmö cooperate, is often highlighted as a European model for cross-border cooperation, this paper argues for a more nuanced view. To be sure, the branding of the Øresund builds upon unique regional assets and is symbolized by visible objects (e.g. the Øresund-bridge and a regional logo). Still, however, the Øresund Region is an “imagined space”: the conurbation is branded as an exciting Euregional hub, whereas the region's inhabitants still cope with many day-to-day problems of cross-border integration. The article concludes that this mismatch between the Øresund's identity and image may hamper the region's future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mapping the emergence of clusters of biotech firms specializing in drug discovery in Denmark and Sweden from 1997 to 2004 we find that Denmark faster and to a higher extent concentrated activities in the mid-sized categories of firms and also earlier and more steeply increased key outputs such as patents and projects. Regression models on firm-level data expose differential supply of venture capital (VC) as a key factor behind this divergence between countries. Further regression analysis examines if VC causes output discrepancies between the two countries not only through differential capital supply but also by the strategies they induce into drug discovery firms (DDFs) through the valuations by which they react to firm performance over the previous financing round. We find significant country differences, Danish investors to a stronger extent inducing output-oriented strategies. The context within which VC emerged in the two countries is discussed as possible causes of the differences between Denmark and Sweden for the role of VC in shaping their emergent bio-clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Europe, many suburban areas strive to boost their vitality through intensification of uses and densification of their vast existing urban fabric. Urban participatory practitioners working from external positions to urban administrations can play a vital role by introducing new co-creative formats for collaboration between public and private actors. Drawing on theories of capacity building and participatory planning this article explores two case-studies from France and Denmark. Through two models of action led by two different urban participatory practitioners we investigate capacity building as long-term and multilevel processes that are structured through different phases and processual goals: (1) To Mobilize: How to create a group of action. (2) To Involve: How to work together in the same direction (3) To Flow: How to anchor the process. The juxtapositioned cases then establish a nuanced perspective on interdisciplinary approaches of urban practitioners and their implications for capacity building in a suburban context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims to show how festivals might impact rural areas and how perceptions of festival impacts on rural areas differ among key groups of festival assemblers (i.e. organizers, visitors, locals). By mobilizing the notion of placemaking, the study identifies six dominant rural festival spinoffs (i.e. attraction, consolidation, promotion, transformation, reinvention, revitalization), thereby increasing the conceptual understanding of the role and value of festivals in the rural context. By applying a combination of three samples, the study provides evidence concerning the perception of different festival effects on host places depending on the evaluation group. The results show that festivals are meaningful events that might be strategically used to sustain, create and reinvent rural assets. Furthermore, the study offers evidence that perceptions of festival spinoffs vary among groups of assemblers, whereas a direct association with festivals either by organization or participation strengthens a positive view of festival spinoffs. The results also demonstrate that festivals might be utilized by policy makers to empower local inhabitants, to promote rural assets and to perpetuate or reinvent somewhat forgotten rural traditions, habits and myths. The increased liveability of rural areas should in turn be used to counter rural decline and the outmigration of young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a decade, tourist destinations in Denmark have experienced decreasing market shares and numbers of international visitors in comparison with the early 1990s. Despite this stagnation, destination development initiatives and national tourism policies have continued largely unaltered, relying on traditional efforts like collective marketing and local visitor information services, while giving limited priority to innovation-oriented measures that could improve the international attractiveness of Danish destinations by renewing the tourist experiences available. The article argues (1) that important reasons for the slow adoption of new destination development strategies can be found in the domination of tourism-related policy networks by short-term sectoral and localist interests, and (2) that recent reforms of subnational and sectoral governance have only improved the prospects of introduction of more innovation-oriented destination development policies to a limited extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural areas are facing prospects of marginalization and peripherality in an age of globalization where the attention of governments and media focuses increasingly on the (lack of) competitiveness of urban and metropolitan regions in Europe. Many rural areas have, therefore, searched for ways to improve their position vis-a-vis other localities by mobilizing local resources and employing policy tools that are believed to foster indigenous social and economic development, including place branding. Unsurprisingly, using food as a means to profile rural localities has become widespread, with branding efforts revolving around local food festivals that commodify local cultural resources. The article attempts to illuminate the challenges faced by branding processes in rural areas through a case study of Løgstør, a small rural town in North Jutland, Denmark, which builds its branding efforts around an annual mussel festival. The analysis focuses on the relationship between stakeholders and branding strategies, and in particular aims to uncover the role of the food festival in aggravating or alleviating inherent tensions between different stakeholders and target groups. It is argued that in the case of Ldgstpr making a food festival pivotal, a signature event for the place branding efforts has been created, which appeals to both external and internal audiences, and that this may hold wider lessons for place-branding initiatives in other small towns across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In common sense perceptions of lay people, borders are perceived as essentialist, as things that demarcate inhabitants in one state from those in another, but being defined as state borders is too narrow a perspective on the spatial divisions of people. In sociological theory, borders are considered as social constructions. Borders are socially constructed; however, the kinds of constructions take on different forms. State borders―or political borders―initiate and work in a complex set of relations with other types of borders such as cultural, linguistic and economical. Whilst borders in political theory are considered the outcome of institutional processes, often as a consequence of political power struggles, for example, wars, borders are addressed differently in other theoretical approaches. A dominant paradigm in border studies perceives borders as social constructions created through both institutional practices and everyday social interaction. The social construction of borders takes place in the specific daily life interaction among people. The article focuses on two central concepts in its analytical strategy. First, the concept of unfamiliarity is introduced as a concept that addresses the mental categorizations that are created in interactions across borders. Second, the concept of “borderwork” by Rumford is introduced as an analytic tool in order to identify processes of border constructions in individuals’ daily interaction. The main aim of the article is to establish the relationship between borderwork and unfamiliarity. The analytical frame has been adapted to the specific case of introducing a Euroregion in the Danish–German border region, and it is demonstrated how interplay between unfamiliarity and borderwork may contribute to explain the resistance towards formal cross-border interaction. Furthermore, the case analysis draws attention towards the subtle mechanisms that contribute to maintaining borders as barriers in a formally debordered Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse how contested transitions in planning rationalities and spatial logics have shaped the processes and outputs of recent episodes of Danish “strategic spatial planning”. The practice of “strategic spatial planning” in Denmark has undergone a concerted reorientation in the recent years as a consequence of an emerging neoliberal agenda promoting a growth-oriented planning approach emphasizing a new spatial logic of growth centres in the major cities and urban regions. The analysis, of the three planning episodes, at different subnational scales, highlights how this new style of “strategic spatial planning” with its associated spatial logics is continuously challenged by a persistent regulatory, top-down rationality of “strategic spatial planning”, rooted in spatial Keynesianism, which has long characterized the Danish approach. The findings reveal the emergence of a particularly Danish approach, retaining strong regulatory aspects. However this approach does not sit easily within the current neoliberal political climate, raising concerns of an emerging crisis of “strategic spatial planning”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial planning commonly adopts a diversity of functions and logics in contributing to the handling of growth and development. Being influenced by an array of contextual driving forces that result in specific institutional practices and policy agendas, spatial planning seems to be constantly reoriented in terms of its purposes and reasoning. This article sets out to explore the diverse orientations and roles that spatial planning has assumed in Denmark over a 50-year period. In doing so, the article examines the evolution of national planning policy by means of a multi-disciplinary framework comprising analytical concepts drawn from planning theory, state spatial theory and discourse analysis. Based on an in-depth study, the article then attempts to qualify, illustrate and synthesize the diverse roles that spatial planning has assumed in Denmark throughout that timeframe. The article concludes that spatial planning initially assumed a steering role, which has been either supplemented or substituted by balancing and/or strategic roles over the course of the past two decades. As a whole, this case is thought to contribute to current discussions regarding how spatial planning is shaped in different parts of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public policies promoting the development of tourist destinations, not least in North-western Europe, have traditionally focused on attracting more tourists through local promotional activities, but in many localities these have now been supplemented by strategies that attempt to change the tourist product on offer, often operating at the regional level, and thus, tourism policies have changed with regard to scale, aims and instruments. Research on the tourism policy has mainly centred on the difficulties inherent in destination development with regard to orchestrating changes in the wide raft of services, typically provided by small local firms, that make up the tourist experience, while less attention has been given to an important prerequisite for these new, product-development strategies, namely the process of policy change from local promotion towards regional tourism policies, despite the potential difficulties involved in shifting geographical scales of governance and adopting a more risky focus on new types of visitors. The aim of this article is to investigate the factors that drive or hamper the tourism policy change from localized marketing towards regional innovation strategies, focusing especially on the role of stakeholder networks and knowledge processes in overcoming spatial fragmentation and product conservatism. Adopting an institutionalist perspective, an in-depth case study of a destination management organization, “Top of Denmark”, situated at the tip of one of northern Europe's prime locations for seaside tourism, is undertaken in order to identify factors that drive or hamper the policy change from localized marketing towards regional, product-development initiatives. This article concludes that the issue of localism has been effectively addressed by establishing and operating as a network-based body where individual stakeholders are mutually dependant on the specific capacities of their partners, a consensual style of decision-making is prevailing, and a division of labour has been established that engages local actors in destination-wide tasks while at the same time enabling them to maintain close links with small tourism businesses in their area. Both in the emergence and in the redevelopment of the organization, the internal wish for change has clearly been stimulated by extra-destinational incentives, but the perceived success of the early, joint-marketing activities has clearly made the current focus on product-development activities easier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently the “experience economy” has been promoted as a vehicle for urban and regional growth, also in peripheral cities and regions. Little evidence is, however, provided to sustain this claim. To inform the discussion of the experience economy as a potential for urban and regional growth, the article provides an analysis of location dynamics and employment growth of a specific segment of the experience economy, the attendance-based experience industries, in Danish municipalities from 1993 to 2006. Based on the analysis, it is concluded that the emerging experience economy in the Danish context produces new forms of uneven geographies: first, employment growth is significantly higher in large cities compared with that in small- and medium-sized cities, and second, the level of education for persons employed in the experience economy is higher in the largest cities compared with that in small- and medium-sized cities. Hence, the potential of the experience economy as a vehicle for growth even in peripheral cities and regions has in many cases (not yet) been fulfilled. Thus, using the experience economy as a lever to obtain future prosperity may be a very fragile strategy for the majority of cities and municipalities outside the main growth centres and classic tourist destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that the present Danish urban policy and urban democracy can be characterized by a striking duality and tension between: (1) Participatory empowering welfare oriented community strategies, which targets deprived districts and neighbourhoods, which are based on notions of the inclusive city. This trend is founded on priorities of radical democracy, social justice, inclusion and citizens empowerment; (2) Neo-elitist/corporative market driven strategic regional and global growth strategies, which are based on notions of the Entrepreneurial Globalized City and where urban policy becomes a question of facilitation of the "growth machine" and neo-liberalized urban authoritarianism. The article discusses dilemmas for overcoming the growing tension between elitist neo-corporate growth regimes, which are in operation via "Quangoes" and closed elite networks, and community empowerment and welfare oriented policy in the age of globalization. Taking the stand of community empowerment and welfare policy, the article conclusively discusses ways to shape a new inclusive politics of difference including using "positive selectivism" as part of an empowerment strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of 'creativity' and the 'creative city' in imagineering Copenhagen and in strategies for developing its urban competitiveness is analysed from a perspective on relations between processes of globalization, developments in urban government/governance and social geographic change. This perspective problematizes what on the surface seems to be an unequivocally positive quality ('creative') and goal ('creativity'). We argue there is a need to recognize the social costs of developments that are glossed over by the creative city rhetoric, including diminished representative democracy, social and geographic polarization and considerable displacement of the marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denmark would appear to be a radical, but overlooked, example of the general Western European trend away from national top-down schemes towards a situation where regional policy is a multi-level activity in which European and regional actors are heavily involved. In order to analyse such transformations the article first proposes a conceptual framework capable of accounting for different forms of regional policy and their interaction, and then applies it to the Danish case. The analysis of inter-organizational relations, strategies and resource dependencies show that in Denmark the new paradigm in regional policy resembles a decentralized form of industrial policy in which regionally-based actors play a major role via their organizational and informational resources, but that central government still plays a major role as a regulator of the activities of other actors within a multi-level institutional setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the industrial development policies of the government of Denmark. Formal cooperation among firms in joint ventures and strategic alliances; Network and alliances project; Network programs; Problems with network cooperation.