This March, the Danish Parliament starts deliberating on a massive engineering project: the construction of a new artificial island called Lynetteholm. If approved, a 1.1 square mile (2.8 square kilometer) land mass will emerge from the harbor waters just north of Copenhagen’s city center; by 2050, it could be built-up with enough homes to house 35,000 people. [...]
On February 22, officials in the Swedish county of Skåne, connected to Copenhagen by the Øresund Bridge, said that they opposed the project because it risked altering ocean currents. “The Øresund is a narrow sound with a very fine environmental balance in its waters, and we need to keep it healthy,” Kristian Wennberg, head of Skåne County’s water services, told CityLab. “There is risk of contamination, and of a reduction of water flow into the straits. The Baltic Sea is already not in the best state and we don’t want the slightest modification.” [...]
Other critics point to a flaw in the model itself. When the city’s first metro line opened in 2007, it exceeded its initial budget by over three times and attracted fewer riders than initially predicted. This left By og Havn saddled with higher-than-expected debts, and thus under ever more pressure to develop its sites for maximum profit. While By og Havn has clarified that its finances are indeed sound and sustainable, the need to keep the financial ball rolling does put pressure on them to find (or create) new land to develop. [...]
Lynetteholm’s environmental impact study failed to allay these fears, critics say, because it looks only at the island’s immediate construction in isolation, without also assessing the potential effects of future harbor tunnel construction, metro expansion and the transferral of water treatment works currently occupying part of the island’s site. So while the tunnel and metro are cited as key reasons for the island’s construction, there is as yet no material to assess their impact. An editorial in the Danish engineering publication Ingeniøren said that preliminary studies for the harbor tunnel and beltway aren’t prepared yet. Danish politicians are eager to fast-track the project, the editorial alleges, because alternative development schemes might “appear less fancy and magnificent in the legacy of former mayors and prime ministers.”
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