Vore(?) Regionale Samarbejder - Et studie om tværkommunale relationer og deres konsekvenser for den regionale udvikling i Danmark

Sammanfattning: This bachelor project provides an analysis of the regional, organizational arena of Denmark and takes point of departure in the structural reform of 2007, which changed the Danish political landscape radically. The result of the reform was that the old municipalities and regions were enlarged and the power relation was changed. The new physical form made the municipalities far more influential, and took away a great deal of power from the regional level. The old regions left behind a emptiness that made room for a new form of regional planning; the city regions, which are regional collaborations driven voluntarily by different actors such as cities, municipalities and private investors. The hypothesis of this paper is that there is a tendency for the regional collaborations to follow the existing growth paradigm and thereby having a wish to be compatible in the international competition of investors. This causes other themes, which earlier were taken care of by the old regions, such as sustainability, which is necessary to be taken of across of municipalities, are being down prioritized. This can have fatal consequences, if nobody takes responsibility of these themes. Methods of analysis in the project include a quantitative survey and qualitative document analysis. The project conducted a survey to gain an understanding of the regional collaborations that exists in Denmark. 52 % of all the municipalities in Denmark took part of the survey and are thereby are represented in this paper. Additionally, the project carried out a qualitative document analysis as to investigate the current state of five city regions; Business Region North Denmark, Business Region Aarhus, Trekantsområdet, and Greater Copenhagen. The main purpose of the document analysis was to assess the similarities and dissimilarities of the five city regions. Finally, the project used secondary data from various newspapers, academic articles, and books as to further understand the regional development of how the new regional collaborations affect this development. The project analysed the question; is sustainability possible in a regional arena that is ever more influenced by neoliberal tendencies? The project found that due to the globalization and thus neoliberal tendencies that the regional collaborations are gaining a greater amount of power. There is a national tendency that the main purpose of these collaborations is to create economic growth in the local area. Other themes such as sustainability are being down prioritized radically. None of the five city regions, which are some of the most popular in Denmark, are incorporating “sustainability” in their agendas. The project argues, from a political ecology stance, that this is a deliberate choice. Furthermore the project argues that a strong regulating power from a national or regional level is needed, if we are to hope for a sustainable development in the regional arena.