Urban Megaprojects in Crisis? Ørestad Copenhagen Revisited

Abstract

Urban megaprojects that aim to attract and spatially accommodate (inter)national investment money have played a prominent role in urban policies in Europe in the last three decades. The 2007 global economic and real-estate crisis has disturbed the context in which contemporary projects are developed. Have projects been able to respond to these changing settings? We regard the management challenge that these projects face as the ambidextrous challenge of combining exploitative and explorative activities. In-depth fieldwork has been conducted on Ørestad in Copenhagen, a project that originated in the early 1990s. We analyse its pre- and post-crisis responses to this challenge and conclude that its particular new town development model has hampered its performance in this regard.