The report evaluates experience from seven larger urban areas which were included in a national programme for urban regeneration (Kvarterløft). The programme addresses multiple problems in the area – urban facilities, traffic, social problems, ethnic problems and others. It is based on the participation and strength of local actors.The fundamental idea in the programme is to combine aid to both people and places and moreover explicitly aims at doing it in a way that involves the community.

The Urban Committee launched a new urban program (kvarterløft) in 1996, and the following year, seven major urban areas around the country were selected for improvement. Its main properties are:Kvarterløft addresses the neighbourhood, not the single citizen or the single property owner Kvarterløft is comprehensive in the sense that it is to be based on a co-ordinated and integrated effort with co-ordination between different public sectors Kvarterløft is based on the participation and strength of local actors Kvarterløft's point of departure is an analysis of the neighbourhood’s potentials and problems.

The evaluation was based on two surveys carried out among residents in respectively 1998 and 2002 and on data from public registers on residents, dwellings and firms in the neighbourhoods for those years. The last set of data was compared with data from the municipalities, in which the areas were located, and with data from the foregoing period 1994-1998. This was to determine whether there had been a development in the neighbourhoods different from the development of the rest of the municipality and different from the period before the programme was implemented.

The main conclusion from the evaluation is: There has been a different development in the seven neighbourhoods, but as a whole the efforts has succeeded in making changes that have made the neighbourhoods more attractive and the residents more positive towards them. These changed attitudes among residents have to some extent resulted in a reduced mobility and changes in the composition of newcomers. But this has not yet resulted in a more mixed composition of residents during the short time the efforts have been made.

Danish Building Research Institute
http://www.sbi.dk
Hans Skifter Andersen

10/06/2003

Hans Skifter Andersen and Louise Kielgast

research

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration

Community development, Integration of social groups