Unsettling the Copenhagen Finger Plan: towards neoliberalization of a planning doctrine?

ABSTRACT

The Finger Plan has guided the spatial development of the Greater Copenhagen Area for more than 70 years, constituting a planning doctrine in Danish spatial planning. However, recently the Finger Plan has come under attack from the liberal Danish Government (2015–2019), who implemented a number of initiatives to deregulate spatial planning in Denmark, most significantly through a ‘modernised’ Planning Act. As part of this process, the Finger Plan was revised twice in 2017 and 2019. The latest version of the Finger plan was prepared as part of a larger policy package aiming at promoting growth in the Greater Copenhagen Region towards 2030. This paper argues that the recent revisions of the Finger Plan must be understood as part of the ongoing neoliberalization of spatial planning in Denmark, but that the Finger Plan, at the same time, has remained ‘immune’ to a more widespread neoliberalization in this process.

KEYWORDS:

• Planning doctrine
• Finger Plan
• neoliberalism
• strategic spatial planning
• planning inertia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It is worth noting that the governance reform and the Finger Plan 2007 were prepared by a liberal-conservative national government.

2 Additional 23 suggestions were subjected to further analysis, as they involved planning related to new transport corridors or projects in close proximity to Copenhagen International Airport.

3 Construction costs have been estimated to 20 billion Danish kroner (www.lynetteholmen.com).

4 Reference is here made to the Italian chocolate company Ferrero’s official commercial slogan for Kinder Egg or Kinder Surprise that it contains three things in one egg (the chocolate, a toy and the surprise).

5 It is outside the scope of the paper to go into detail with this critique. The main critique includes questioning of the financial aspects of the project, the environmental impact assessment which only included the construction phase, and the main (neoliberal) rationality of the project.