Ørestad — the failed megaproject

Analysis of dangers of market-oriented planning. Discrepancy between imaginative intentions of large-scale development and projecting them into a built urban reality. / affiliated with Disconnected Innovations.

Planned in 1994-97 with first office building finished in 2001, Ørestad megaproject on the Amager island in Copenhagen was developed with a purpose of accommodating 120 thousand people for living, studying and working purposes. The project was initiated with overwhelming optimism, ambitiously presented with flashy visuals depicting vibrant urbanity. Instead,

the built environment was proven to be unfit to meet the expected results, failing to project the original intentions into the social, cultural and civic domain of the urban realm. Despite ‚attractive location and excellent infrastructure‘, architectural objects stand obliviously within the indifferent and vacant public spaces. Wrong assessment of the overlap of scales, user groups and ownership, as well as a choice to roll out the planning without the involvement of the Danish public, ruling out the local influences due to projects’ international importance resulted in a one of the biggest failed development projects of contemporary European planning.