The lived space of urban entrepreneurialism : Urban imaginaries, everyday life and a community forged in lacking, the case of Ørestad, Copenhagen

Abstract

This paper explores the lived experience of Ørestad, Copenhagen, a 1990s mega-project still under development, from the perspective of its inhabitants lived space. The project is taken as an expression of Copenhagen transitioning from the managerial- to the entrepreneurial city, and lived space as one inseparable part of a tripartite (re)production of space (Harvey, 1989; Lefebvre, 1991). Drawing upon interviews, critical discourse analysis and interactive map-making it shows how Ørestad, rather than as the cosmopolitan metropole and inner city space it was imagined to become, is lived as a disconnected housing satellite, akin to the external centres of the 1948 Finger Plan, owed to is purpose as a tool in an inter-spatial competition. To avoid similar outcomes hereafter, the imaginaries of,- and rationales for, urban (re)development projects need to be radically reformulated, otherwise urban life might increasingly be dominated by contestations, contradictions and competition.