Introducing business regions in Denmark: The ‘businessification’ of strategic spatial planning?

This paper explores the driving forces behind the promotion of new soft spaces of territorial governance in Denmark at the scale of city regions, the so-called ‘business regions’. We interpret the emergence of business regions as outcomes of the most recent round of reterritorialisation in Denmark, producing new spaces for promoting neoliberal policy agendas of competitiveness, job creation and economic growth. We argue that the business regions should not only be understood as products of neoliberalisation, but also as spaces of neoliberal experimentation, contributing to the normalisation of policy agendas of job creation and business development as taken-for-granted planning objectives. We conclude that the new business regions emerging at the scale of city regions constitute new political spaces for reworking the Danish planning culture in the context of neoliberalism. We suggest that this development can be conceptualised as a ‘businessification’ of strategic spatial planning. This paper explores the driving forces behind the promotion of new soft spaces of territorial governance in Denmark at the scale of city regions, the so-called business regions. We interpret the emergence of business regions as outcomes of the most recent round of reterritorialisation in Denmark, producing new spaces for promoting neoliberal policy agendas of competitiveness, job creation and economic growth. We argue that the business regions should not only be understood as products of neoliberalisation, but also as spaces of neoliberal experimentation, contributing to the normalisation of policy agendas of job creation and business development as taken-for-granted planning objectives. We conclude that the new business regions emerging at the scale of city regions constitute new political spaces for reworking the Danish planning culture in the context of neoliberalism. We suggest that this development can be conceptualised as a ‘businessification’ of strategic spatial planning.