Locals call it the "Prairie Express." A shiny new stretch of subway whisks travelers from downtown Copenhagen to a near-wasteland on the city's outer fringe, site of the giant Bella Center. There delegates of the European Union will gather for this week's big summit--something of a leap of faith, since it's nearly the only structure around. But that will soon change, if you listen to the urban planners. Within a decade or so, they say, this former military training ground will be Orestad--a new town complete with a university, a concert hall, shopping malls and office buildings that draws 100,000 workers a day, not only from Copenhagen but also from the southern tip of Sweden across the nearby Oresund strait.
At least, that's the dream. Two years ago Denmark and Sweden opened the so-called Oresund Link, a 16-kilometer bridge and tunnel joining Copenhagen to the Swedish port of Malmo, now just 40 minutes away by train. Visionaries saw their chance to promote this patch as a single region of 3.5 million residents--highly skilled, educated, English-speaking and (presumably) happy to study and work on either side of the strait. With communism gone and the Baltic nations beginning to reknit their old Hanseatic ties, Oresund seemed destined for a bright future as a growing commercial hub. Even before the bridge, pharmaceutical and IT companies were already clustering in the area, attracted by high-grade universities and research centers.
In practice, though, the path to integration has been rocky. Yes, a steady trickle of Danes in search of cheaper housing has pushed up real-estate prices in Malmo. Some 6,000 commuters now shuttle across the bridge each day, and the ports of Malmo and Copenhagen have merged into a single company. But when it comes to the crunch issues of creating a transnational region, there's been scant progress. The reason: "Basically, everything that was regulated before the bridge was built is still regulated in the same way," says Christian Wichmann Matthiessen, a geography professor at Copenhagen University.
Consider the matter of taxation. Personal taxes are higher in Denmark; in Sweden, companies dole out more in welfare and social costs. The governments' failure to agree on a common policy continues to divide the region as "Swedish" and "Danish." And what about employment? It's tough to sell Oresund as a single region when multinationals are attracted by the easier Danish rules on hiring and firing. And so far, it looks like foreign companies are indeed favoring Copenhagen.
Nor are cultural differences easily put aside. The stereotype persists of the inflexible, buttoned-up Swede and the pragmatic, easygoing Dane. "In Sweden they always say that you can't trust a Dane. If you give him your hand he will take your little finger," says Lars Karlsson, boss of Copenhagen Malmo Port. "In Denmark they say the Swedes are too complicated and organize everything to death." If the different languages are close enough for mutual understanding, there's still plenty of scope for confusion. "In Denmark we tend to use a lot of irony--a big problem when speaking in another language," says Charlotte Rassing of the Danish research institute IKFA, suggesting that attitudes are slow to shift. "People still say, 'We are Danes; they are Swedes'."
Don't expect optimism, then, when you ask how long it will take Oresund to meld into a single region. "It could be a generation," says Jurgen Christensen, an economist at Danske Bank in Copenhagen. Bridging Europe's cultural divides, it seems, takes more than a bridge.
Uncommon Knowledge
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