Cross-border regional enlargement in Oresund

Cross-border regional enlargement entails complex dynamics. The integration process at the maritime border between Sweden and Denmark illustrates this. Physical infrastructure has been improved by national governments and intranational and supranational institutions have added to the instrumentation as a precondition for social interaction and integration. The outcome of these efforts is here tested under a hypothesis that in spite of this forceful cocktail of policy instruments, the cross-border regionalization process is at best a long-run phenomenon in the Oresund Region. The point of departure is the stepwise procedure for the formation of binational cities suggested in Ehlers (2001, GeoJournal 54: 21-32). Social interaction is identified as the pivotal factor in the present state of integration of the Oresund Region using Bucken-Knapp (2001, GeoJournal 54: 51-60). A benchmarking method is proposed for testing social interaction in the labour market, where cross-border dynamics are bench-marked against national dynamics. The cross-border regional enlargement process is still in its very infancy and a continued focus on policies to promote cross-border social interaction is required. The present governance without government approach to cross-border cooperation in the Oresund Region is in that respect challenged by a reform of the Danish geo-administrative system.