Ørestad

Copenhagen has a major housing shortage. About 1,000 people move to Copenhagen every month and there are not places for them to live. I've met many people who had to stay in a hostel or with friends for several months before they found housing here. Part of the problem is that Copenhagen is an old city. The buildings aren't very tall (and their are restrictions on height) and there isn't really room to develop more. However, there is an island, Amager, on the southern end of the city where the airport is located which does have room for growth.

On Amager, there is a planned community called Ørestad. Ørestad provides new housing, office space, and educational space for Copenhagen. At this point, the community is part-way built. Aside from the practical problems that it aims to solve, Ørestad is interesting because the architecture is very unique. Almost every building has interesting design aspects.

When my parents came in March, we visited Ørestad, but it was cold and windy, so we did a lot of our sightseeing from the Metro, although we did walk around some too. Juliana wanted to see Ørestad and we had a much better day for visiting. It's easy to visit because the community is long and skinny with a  Metro line running down the middle. Around the community is park land: one of the goals of the design is to integrate nature into the urban environment. Here are some of the sights we saw: