In an attempt to slow down the development of growing shopping centres and a decrease in sales in the smaller towns, the Danish government introduced a planning act in 1997 that included strict retail regulations. The regulations made sure that any retail development only took place inside the city centres, preventing the out-of-town establishments from continuing its quick development. In 2017 the regulations were removed at the same time as the planning responsibility was moved from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Business and Growth. This thesis aims to understand how the regulations have affected cities in Denmark, in a perspective of planning and urban development, but also how cities in Denmark reacted when they regained planning freedom after 20 years of regulations. Three cities of different sizes have been looked at, Nyborg, Elsinore and Aalborg, where planning and strategic documents published by the municipalities during and after the time period of retail regulations have been looked at. The collected material has then been analysed with the help of theories of resilience, central places and the thoughts of Jan Gehl, resulting in several key outcomes. During the time period of regulations the municipalities had little room to implement any bigger projects, but there could be seen a difference in attitude between the cities, where smaller cities accepted the situation and bigger cities more actively tried to go around the regulation as much as possible. The shift of restructuring the planning to the municipal level again in 2017 can be understood in a wider neo-liberal agenda from the government's side. On the smaller scale, which is the main focus of the thesis, a similar strategy could be seen over all three cases after the easement of regulation, where relief areas in the outskirts of cities have become the main focus area and are being prioritised in the retail planning. This has caused a collision though as the cities simultaneously promote an inside out strategy, to keep the retail concentration in the city centres. These strategies made by the cities goes against the presented theories on how to create a rich urban life and a lively city centre. There also lacks any discussion on how to create a resilient environment in the city centres, something that according to the literature is necessary in order to prevent the city centres from external shocks, and rising competition from e-trading and rising competition. The conclusion states that with no rethinking of strategies, the retailscape in Denmark will follow a path similar to the one observed in the beginning of the 90s, where bigger retail centres will outcompete smaller ones. Cities in Denmark will also need to incorporate a resilience based thinking in the future, in order to reach their intentions of keeping the city centres as the main retail area in the municipalities, or their own current strategies will be the reason for the decline of retail in the city centres.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-68134 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Gotfredsen, Max |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för Urbana Studier (US) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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