Matthiessen, Christian Wichmann: Trends in the urbanization process.
The Copenhagen case. Geografisk Tidsskrift 80: 98-101. Copenhagen,
June 1980.

Within the framework of the international comparative research project (Cost of Urban Growth) new trends in urban development have recently been observed. The object of this article is to discuss the trends and give impirical evidence on Danish data.

Christian Wichmann Matthiessen, Senior Lecturer, Ph. D. Geographical
Institute, University of Copenhagen, Haraldsgade 68, DK-2100,
Copenhagen 0.

The following article is based on the literature referred to
and on data analysis.

Within the framework of the international comparative research project (Cost of Urban Growth) new trends in urban development have recently been observed. The object of this article is to discuss the trends and give impirical evidence on Danish data.

The CURB-project is coordinated by the European Centre for Research and Documentation within Social Sciences in Vienna. 14 Countries from East and West Europe take part in the project, which has been undertaken to investigate the presumed relations between costs of development in agglomerations of different size on one hand and the economic and spatial structure on the other. The project comprises a number of coherent stages. In the first stage a general theory of urban growth has been developed as a basis for the rest of the project. The theory is based on a crossnational comparative study of urban change and deconcentration (Berg et.al. 1979). The theory explains the process of centralization and subsequent decentralization of population and employment within the urban systems as they evolve over time, irrespective of their size, region, or location. What does vary is the rate at which the process operates and the stage the development has reached.

STAGES OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Within the CURB project four stages of urbanization have
been clearly identified (Drewett, 1979 cited below).
1. Urbanization. Due to the industrialization process urban
population is growing. The already existing towns are optimal
locations for industries and experience heavy and con

centrated growth. Migration from the hinterland to these
cores constitutes the major flows. Interaction takes place
primarily between core and hinterland.

2. Urbanization - suburbanization. Urban population growth is slowing down and growth in suburbs takes place at a higher rate than in the core. The urban structure is consolidating, and the quality of urban facilities is improved. Interactions are still primarily intraregional. Economic exchanges of goods and services increase between regions. 3. Suburbanization. Shifts of urban population and production units (lagged) from core to urban rings lead to urban sprawl. Interaction between urban areas increase (migration, innovation, diffusion).

4. Desurbanization. The big agglomerations loose population,
the former hinterlands (particularly the small urban
places) now become the destination of migration.

All four stages can be observed within the urban system of even the same country so that some urban places are in one stage, others in another. In the CURB project there is strong evidence that places within one nation are in development stages which correspond with settlement type rather than with regional development.

TRENDS IN POPULATION CHANGE

The shifting trends in population location in the seventies have been clearly demonstrated by a number of scientists. Vining (1978) explains the changing trends on a world-wide scale as a disperal from major metropolitan regions to peripheral regions. The same evidence is given on national scale by Illeris (1979) who also demonstrated how the population growth now is higher in the smaller urban areas than in the large ones.

Isard and Reiner (1979) give a comprehensive analysis of the shift in population location in the United States where the trends go from metropolitan areas towards the suburbs, the hinterland and the »Sunbelt«. They describe the development as three interrelated shifts: 1. Diffusion, or the continued movement of population and investment outward from older center cities to suburban areas. 2. Dispersion, or the shift to peripheral metropolitan areas, smaller urban places, and even rural areas away from the major conurbations which have come to dominate the national scene. 3. The interregional shift, or the redirection of economic activity which has led to growth in the formerly impoverished and underdeveloped parts of the United States.

The shift from metropolitan areas to peripheral regions
and smaller urban places is explained by a number of factors:
economical, ecological and even psysiological.

According to the theory of the CURB project it seems
that it also plays an important role that urban development
is a process of growth and decline which can be described
and foreseen. The process follows laws of development.

In Denmark the stage of suburbanization in the metropolitan
region of Copenhagen is being followed by the stage of
desurbanization.

In the CURB project there is some evidence that the stage of desurbanization shall be followed by one more stage, that of reurbanization which implies new growth of the core population in the metropolitan areas. The stage and the adjoining process have been named gentlefication by other authors who explain the process as one of negative segregation. The migrants into the urban cores can be described as a population of rich, competible, professionally educated and employed, often with double homes and without children.

REURBANIZATION

It seems natural that market factors or purposeful government policy is going to stop the decline of the large agglomerations. The economic and cultural potentials of the metropolitan areas are going to change the trends of population location so people once more migrate towards the core thus creating a new cyclus of urban development. The above forecast has been elaborated within the CURB project and is discussed in details in a paper by Klaassen (1979).

It is a question in which direction the urban agglomerations
will develop and it is by examining the empirical data
that the stage of reurbanization can be identified.

The alternative to a new cyclus of development stages introduced by reubanization is depressing. The only alternative is desurbanization within which the metropolitan areas are facing a development of decline and fall which implies all the negative elements known from the crisis of big American cities.

Within the CURB projekt it is shown that a few European agglomerations are in a stage that can be described as reurbanization. But more prosperous is the political analysis which demonstrates that strong political forces are fighting against the decline and fall of the urban cores.

THE COPENHAGEN CASE

Hansen and Petersen (1980) have studied the core of Copenhagen and demonstrated how the land-use category, housing, during recent years have won the competition with other categories. This has stopped the tendency of decline in the core's number of apartments which also receives a considerable number new-built apartments. These are mostly expensive and owned by their residents.

Furthermore, during the seventies there has been a heavy growth in the number of homes within the old suburbs encouraged by liberal policy of subdividing larger parcels and sale of apartments.

Empirical evidence of new trends in the development of Greater Copenhagen is given in the diagrams and maps in this article. Greater Copenhagen had population growth until 1974, then a small decline. This has been in accordance

with official politics which in the beginning of the seventies formulated the goal of stopping the growth of the metropolitan areas in Denmark, but not the result of major political actions. It is rather the process of reubanizations which has reached the region.

If the population development is disaggregated to old core and the rest of the region, shifts in trends stand out clearly. The old core is the municipalities which were fully urbanized by 1950, the rest is the administrative metropolitan region minus the old core (thus also comprising agricultural land but all within the area heavily influenced by the metropolitan labour market). The old core was growing until the midfifties, then declining, but, at the end of the seventies, this decline stagnated again. The rest of the region started its growth after World War II and continued to grow till the end of the seventies when it stagnated. Thus, the stage of suburbanization can be identified from 1945 to 1978 and is expected to be followed by the stage of desurbainzation.

The diagram showing the net migration underscores these trends and also indicates that the process of reubanization has started; this might lead to the stage of reurbanization because fall in decline in net migration in the old core from 1973 might be followed by positive net migration leading to reubanization.

The maps of net migration support this weak evidence. The strong suburbanization in the sixties and the beginning of the seventies is followed by a much weaker suburbanization and a change in tendencies of heavy decline in some of the core municipalities.

At the end of the seventies a dramatic change took place. First, net migration fell to a very low figure. This can be explained by the world-wide economic crisis which diminished building activity and urban renewal, but also by the state policy which introduced a new system of taxation for real estates and on the market itself. Two of the core municipalities have stopped declining and are stagnating, and the decline is now seen in those areas which started their growth at the beginning of the seventies. Growth is now seldom and takes place only moderately in a few municipalities located quite far from the core.

Net migration is used as a key variable to describe the urbanization process, because it corresponds most closely with the change in stock of dwellings. Natural increase is a variable which results either in change in population within the existing stock of apartments or in migration. The data in this article are based on population registers from the statistical office of Denmark.

RESUME

Projektet »Costs of Urban Growth« er et intereuropæisk forskningssamarbejde koordineret af Wien-centret. Inden for projektet arbejdes med byudviklingsteorier. Nogle udviklingsstadier er identificeret: urbanisering, suburbanisering og desurbanisering, hver resultatet af tilsvarende processer.

I artiklen er disse beskrevet kort. Indenfor de sidste få år er nye tendenser observeret, som tyder på, at bykernernes affolkning vil vende. Processen og det følgende stadium kaldes reurbanisering. Artiklens fire kort demonstrerer ved hjælp af nøglevariablen »nettomigration« betydelige ændringer i tendenser indenfor hovedstadsregionen. Her kan suburbaniseringsstadiet identificeres fra 1945 til 1978, og der er visse tegn på, at desurbaniseringsstadiet bliver kortvarigt og vil efterfølges af reurbanisering. Artiklen er baseret på resultater fra »Cost of Urban Growth«-projektet, på andre forfatteres diskussioner af tendenser samt danske statistikker.

REFERENCES

L.v.d. Berg, R. Drewett, L. Klaassen, A. Rossi & K. Vijverberg
(1980): Elements of a theory of urban development and policy
Pergamon.

B. Bay ens, R. Drewett and C. Vukovich (1980): Urban change and
societal developments. Pergamon.

R. Drewett (1980): Changing Urban Structures in Europe. N.E.I.
Rotterdam.

K. F. Hansen & O. K. Petersen (1980): Københavns bykerne. En
analyse af ejerlejlighedslovgivningens virkninger. Byplan 1980
(draft).

S. Illeris (1979): Recent Development of the settlement systems of
advanced market economy countries. Geografisk Tidsskrift 78/
79. København.

S. Illeris (1979): Den regionale udvikling knækker. Geografisk
Orientering 9 (1). Brenderup.

W. hard & T. A. Reiner (1979): Urban Development and Megapolitan
Decline in the United States. N. E. I. Rotterdam.

L. H. Klaassen (1979): Urban Development in Western Europe.
N.E.I. Rotterdam.

D. R. Vining & T. Kontuly (1978): Population Dispersal from Major
Metropolitan Regions: An International Comparison. Int. Sei.
Rev. vol. 3, 1978.