The Changing Location of Service Activities in the Copenhagen Region

Abstract

Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 97: 120–131, 1997.

The location of services in the Copenhagen region is described and analyzed. Six types of services are distinguished:

Local private and public services, serving the daily needs of the population, e.g. retailing, have suburbanized, closely following the distribution of population, though with a time-lag. The same goes for services which serve more special needs, e, g, hospitals.

Among producer services, some remain in the centre of Copenhagen, e.g. lawyer firms, partly for historical reasons, partly to minimize costs of face-to-face contacts with business partners. But contrary to traditional theory, most producer services are suburbanizing, mainly in order to find large sites and to improve their accessibility for cars. Some have shifted to the western suburbs to reduce costs (back offices) or to be close to the traffic arteries which connect Copenhagen with the rest of Denmark (wholesaling). Business services, e.g. engineering consultants, have primarily moved to the northern, amenity-rich suburbs, for reasons of prestige and of proximity to their high-status labour force. Still other services have located in a more hap-hazard way where they could find large areas, e.g. the airport and military establishments.

Keywords:

• Service location
• Copenhagen
• suburbanisation
• proximity to customers
• accessibility
• land requirements