In Copenhagen, there’s no shortage of old buildings, but you don’t have to go far to find new ones. On Amager, the island south of Copenhagen, there’s a building boom in progress, and every building is new. The area being developed is called Ørestad. The developers are marketing the central region as “Ørestad City.” There’s even an English version of the Ørestad website.
Apparently this area was part of a nature preserve until a few years ago. Then the area was opened up to developers. Today it’s the site of a convention center called Bella Center, and Field’s, the largest mall in Scandinavia. New condominiums are going up all around these two facilities.
There are so many new condos that it’s hard to imagine that there will be enough buyers, but there probably will be. The economy is running hot in Denmark. In fact, there’s evidence that Denmark has surpassed the US in terms of technical innovation.
This building boom is helped, in no small part (and certainly not by accident) by the fact that the metro — or subway — runs through Ørestad. That’s the metro track in the first image below (the metro runs underground in the city, but is elevated in the outskirts). The metro system opened in 2002, Field’s opened in 2004, and most of the condos are still under construction. This is very much a recent set of events.
The condo prices are high by American standards. A 1600 square-foot place, for example, runs about a half million dollars, depending on the view. But by Danish standards, that’s a big condo — big enough for a couple to raise two kids, and property values have skyrocketed in the last ten years, so many people have a lot of cash if they bought their last condo in the 90′s.
If you keep going south, you’ll reach Vestamager — the end of the metro line — which is one stop past Ørestad. Unlike Ørestad, which already has completed and occupied condos, they’re just starting to build the Vestamager area. This last shot is taken from just south of Vestamager, looking North. Clearly, it’s where the city ends, but it won’t stay that way for long. Here’s the vision for Ørestad Syd (Syd means South).
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