Generating private co-investments in area-based urban regeneration: Lessons from Denmark

In recent years, public-private collaboration as well as private co-investments has been intensely promoted in Danish area-based urban regeneration policy and programmes. The paper will discuss to which extent these ambitions have been full-filled, and what has actually attracted private investments to the urban regeneration areas. The paper is based on evaluations of the Danish area-based regeneration programmes, as well as research on private investments in selected urban regeneration areas.
Our research shows that area-based urban regeneration in average generates private investments a factor 5 times higher than the public investments in the areas, in terms of urban regeneration subsidies. Private investments, however, might cover different property investment strategies: ‘Passive management’, ‘active management’ and ‘development’. We suggest that for the urban regeneration areas, development is more interesting than other types of investment strategies, but our studies shows that this type of investments are generated by efforts from specialised developers. The question is what municipalities can do to attract such developers and investors. Case studies shows that developers have little knowledge about urban regeneration, and that developers own networks are more likely to lead them to the urban regeneration areas, than knowledge of the urban regeneration itself. Compared to international research on private investments in urban re-generation (Adair et al, 2007; Nappi-Choulet, 2006; Guy & Henneberry, 2004), we therefore argue for more focus on the institutional context's role for attracting small-scale investors to the urban regeneration.