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Denmark parliament approves giant artificial island off Copenhagen
- manexploitsman 5y agoWouldn't it be cheaper and better for the environment to buy some land off Germany or Sweden? Once the deal is sealed, they could start building the city the very next day.
- hadlock 5y agoThis is to protect the local port for the capital of the country, particularly during large storms. Buying land inland along the border would not accomplish this protection task.
- ToFab123 5y agoThere is a few miles of ocean between Demmark and Sweden.
- mongol 5y agoWhy do you think part of Sweden is for sale?
- Hamuko 5y agoYeah, countries are usually unwilling or incapable of turning over their land to another country. Back in 2016, the Norwegians had an idea to gift Finland a new highest peak by shifting the border between Finland and Norway just a bit as Finland was due to celebrate its 100th year of independence. However, it never actually went anywhere since it'd be unconstitutional for Norway to start splitting off its country. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37662811 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37662811
- jeofken 5y agoI’m not sure they would want Malmö back
- flexie 5y agoThere is plenty of space in Denmark for its existing population (and for millions more, for that sake). The issue is that there is not that much space in Copenhagen.
- haasted 5y agoI don't really understand why expansion towards West is not an option.
- KozmoNau7 5y agoBecause they want to sell expensive housing close to the sea, not affordable housing far from the sea. It's a stupid prestige project, primarily designed to attract rich investors, who will let their investment object apartments sit empty, creating another dead neighborhood.
- boublepop 5y agoThere is plenty of space in Copenhagen. However plans to build anything anywhere gets shot down constantly with silly laws and restrictions. Politicians don’t want a more healthy housing market in the capital because they are all some of those who are profiting most from how unhealthy it is.
- Grustaf 5y agoIt is definitely an idiotic and corrupt project, but how would it help Copenhagen to buy a part of Sweden? There's plenty of farmland in Denmark that could be used, including within bicycle distance of the center.
- andrewshadura 5y agoThis insanity must be stopped. I hope the protesters don't give up and continue fighting this megalomaniac project.
- gvd 5y agoCute
- dncornholio 5y agoGiant? 2.5 km2 is childsplay :)
- dustymcp 5y agoI cant stop wondering the why its such a massive undertaking and we have plenty of land just expand on the other side i cant stop feeling that this is a prestige project with very little gain.
- aaron695 5y agoThe article mentions it also "protects the port of Copenhagen" But otherwise it steals value from the city and it increases the coastline. Increasing the coastline is truly adding to society, humans value water access, but I suspect the stolen value by shifting the centre of mass of Copenhagen obfuscates it's true added worth. It's quite different to building up or down or abstract improvements like tunnels which increase density and more clearly add more than they take.
- lbriner 5y agoThat's exactly what I thought. There is a ridiculous amount of power that gets attached to a capital city, which means we can't do the sensible thing which would be to spend far less creating new towns or cities with modern sustainable methods, better balance of transport/living etc. I guess it is just good money after bad and the fact that despite the amount of sense it makes to build elsewhere, lots of companies cannot find good employees and think they need to be in the big city to get those.
- Grustaf 5y agoWhich option do you think will generate the largest bribes?
- sschueller 5y agoIs this where they are going to send their asylum applicants? It would be a lot safer for them than in their home countries where they are being persecuted. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57343572 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57343572
- geewee 5y agoNo the property prices would be way too high there for that..
- boublepop 5y agoThis is the absolute concentrate of idiocy. They need the island because there isn’t land to build new housing… there’s plenty of land to build new housing but every single attempt gets shot down with excuses about “maintaining nature” because every single politician has had a 3000% increase of the value of their houses and apartments in the capital region and don’t want to see that end. Once the island is finally build and complete, some politician will find some species of frog on it that’s suddenly vitally important to conserve even though it’s also verywhere else in Denmark, and construction of housing will become prohibited.
- ostenning 5y agoIf this is true then that’s diabolical!
- potiuper 5y agoMight as well be done with it and build the wall between Skagen and Gothenburg.
- fma 5y agoHong Kong extends and creates islands pretty often...1 square mile, 50 years...seems very ineffecient. https://discovery.cathaypacific.com/hong-kongs-land-reclamation-past-present-future/ https://discovery.cathaypacific.com/hong-kongs-land-reclamat...
- iscrewyou 5y agoHere’s a list of existing such islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_islands
- perihelions 5y agoThis is some remarkably long-term planning: "If construction goes ahead as planned, the majority of the foundations for the island off Denmark's capital should be in place by 2035, with an aim to fully complete the project by 2070." I can't recall ever seeing the year 2070 or later in print, in the context of some definite project or plan. Are there other examples?
- mushishi 5y agoJohn Cage's musical piece is played hundreds of years. > The longest music piece in the world is being performed in the city of Halberstadt in Germany: John Cage's composition for organ ORGAN2/ASLSP - As SLow aS Possible - is resounding here in an extreme interpretation of 639 years, that means until the year 2640! Halberstadt is a town (43,800 inhabitants in 2015) in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, and the capital of the district of Harz. https://universes.art/en/specials/john-cage-organ-project-halberstadt https://universes.art/en/specials/john-cage-organ-project-ha...
- yread 5y agoSeems reasonable. Maasvlakte is a comparable project: an artificial island (20 km2 while this island is "only" 2.8km2) outside Rotterdam harbor and it was built over 25 years (1974-1997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasvlakte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasvlakte (Dutch wiki has much more info: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasvlakte https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasvlakte ) Another comparable project is the new Strandeiland in Amsterdam https://www.amsterdam.nl/projecten/ijburg/deelprojecten-ijburg/strandeiland/ https://www.amsterdam.nl/projecten/ijburg/deelprojecten-ijbu... 1.5km2, started this year, fully complete in 2040. But it's built in shallow, tide-less Ijsemeer not in the sea so it's a lot easier EDIT; the Dutch out of necessity have plans for up to 2200: https://www.delta.tudelft.nl/article/keep-our-feet-dry-new-netherlands https://www.delta.tudelft.nl/article/keep-our-feet-dry-new-n... “One day with a sigh of relief we will give up this country to the waves.”
- ekianjo 5y agoKobe in Japan has several artificial islands. all built by a Dutch company.
- ajcp 5y agoThe city of Copenhagen has a more comprehensive breakdown of the project.[1] I think it's interesting that they intend to build residential property to accommodate 35,000. The area around that island is very...heavy industry related. It's also very very windy over there, but then again so is Denmark in general. 1. https://www.kk.dk/lynetteholm https://www.kk.dk/lynetteholm
- tokai 5y agoThe time and money spent per resident is ludicrous. But I guess it is a politically much easier way to get housing build, than finding/making space elsewhere in the city for development.
- Clewza313 5y agoIt's also meant to protect Copenhagen against sea surges and rising water levels.
- tokai 5y agoCould be done quicker and cheaper with other means than an artificial urbanised island.
- katbyte 5y agoSure but you wouldn’t get dual use out of it, need housing need a storm break why not combine them?
- KozmoNau7 5y agoBecause the storm break could be a relatively simple dike, a thin structure jutting out, instead of a massive artificial island. There will be hundreds of trucks driving through Copenhagen every single day for decades, to dump the necessary dirt to construct the island. That is going to cause massive noise and disturbance problems for people living in the city, all for a prestige project that has been hastily jammed through, including a runaround on environmental regulations. The end result will be even more unaffordable luxury apartments, which will be bought by rich investors, creating yet another dead area devoid of local culture and life, just like Ørestad and Nordhavn, where a huge number of expensive apartments sit completely empty, bought only as investment objects. A much better alternative would be to construct a simpler storm break, and then expand Copenhagen westwards, increasing density in the suburbs and outlying areas, by predominantly building affordable apartments and ensuring good public transit coverage, to combat the current situation of students and working class people being pushed out of the city by ever-increasing housing prices.
- davidhyde 5y agoMy knee jerk reaction to this was “Why build an island when the glaciers are melting and the global sea level is rising?” but then I looked into it and by 2100 the average rise will be about 0.3m. Just dredge up more mud and you should be good! https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
- bobthepanda 5y agoGlobal sea level rise also doesn't affect all places equally. Northern Europe is expected to be below average for sea level rise. https://www.climatecentral.org/news/ice-melt-means-uneven-sea-level-rise-around-the-world-15640 https://www.climatecentral.org/news/ice-melt-means-uneven-se...
- BurningFrog 5y agoNorthern Scandinavia is rising by ~5mm/year, because the land is still adjusting from being weighed down by ice during the ice age 10k years ago. But Denmark is not affected by this.
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoYes, sue nature for 4 times more tidal range than the 0.3m cited due to climate change. If you can handle the tide, you should just need to allocate bit more space to shore.
- mercutio2 5y agoIt depends very much on what happens with Antarctic and (to a lesser extent) Greenland ice sheets.
- gregwebs 5y agoAccording to that link 2 meters is possible as well.
- Barrin92 5y agoAs the article states one of the functions of the island is actually to protect the rest of the land from rising sea levels because it will involve building advanced flooding protections. (Also as a side note, a 0.3m rise doesn't sound like much, but that is an enormous mass of water. IIRC a rise of that level would destroy more than a quarter of the land of most American coastal cities)
- BurningFrog 5y ago> The approval by Denmark's parliament paves the way for the 1 sq mile (2.6 sq km) project to begin later this year. That's not a giant island.
- 7952 5y agoThese kind of numbers are not intuitive. Don't forget that you are working in volume of material. Making something only 1m high across 1 sq mile is around 2.5 million cubic metres.
- BurningFrog 5y agoI only commented on the size of the island. As island go, "giant" is far from a correct description. Calling it a "giant project" would be fine.
- bombcar 5y agoA square mile is pretty big, especially for an artificial island. It’s 640 acres (or something like 2,400 suburban homes). Sure it’s not the size of Japan or something, but it’s not tiny.
- danieldk 5y agoThe Dutch artificial island 'Flevopolder' is ~970 square km. So, I wouldn't say giant when there is an artificial island that has a 373x larger surface area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flevopolder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flevopolder It is still a very nice project nonetheless!
- dan-robertson 5y agoBut that’s a polder made mostly by building dykes and draining the land rather than raising up the ground level across 970 square km. Flevopolder is about 4m below sea level. I think the plan here is different and will not be done by building up dykes and draining the area inside.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago> A case against the development of Lynetteholm has been brought before the European Court of Justice by environmental groups. I’m always a little surprised that the most wild and natural parts of world (the flyover country) is populated by anti environmentalists (or rather, libertarians typically), and the most densely populated cities devoid of most green things tend to have clusters of environmentalists. Don’t they know they can come out to the country, buy 50 acres of woods and streams and meadows and wildlife, and not worry about how many cars are on the streets of Copenhagen? They’d love it in these areas. People ride horses and graze animals. They hunt and go bird watching and identify all of the local trees.
- rvense 5y ago> Don’t they know they can come out to the country, buy 50 acres of woods and streams and meadows and wildlife, and not worry about how many cars are on the streets of Copenhagen? In Denmark? Hardly. If you buy 50 acres here, you'll get fields or pastures, and the legal obligation to keep it as such. Actually, as far as I remember anything over 30 hectares will come with requirements that you have some sort of certification as a farmer. 0,5% of Denmark's 40,000 square kilometers is wild. The largest forests are all state-owned. 60% is farmed land - 80% of which, ie., 50% of the country, is used just to grow pig feed.
- boublepop 5y agoThere’s no requirement to get a “certificate as a farmer” and you can get European subsidies to fund converting fields to forrests. The only thing you can’t do is build more housing on the fields, because everyone in power in Denmark is doing everything they can to fight affordable housing.
- rvense 5y agoA few years ago when I was looking at houses in the country there was definitely some requirement for buying more than 30 or 35 hectares of farmland. And while you might be able to get permission to convert some areas into forests, it is explicitly stated in the planning laws that the character of the countryside is to be preserved. I can assure you that there are lots of things you can't do. And before that, of course, there's the price. 50 acres way out in the sticks in America might be quite affordable. Arable land in Denmark, less so. There's no easy escape here like the post I reacted made it sound.
- rhplus 5y agoThe photo in the article is labeled, "The port of Copenhagen, where the artificial island Lynetteholm is planned to be built, as it is today", but fails to mention that the picture is of Trekroner Fort, itself an artificial island built on sunken warships from 1713: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekroner_Fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekroner_Fort