Country hopes incorporating southern Swedish region of Skåne will gain the region more business and visitors – but the idea is not universally loved

Not since 1675 has there been such tension on the border. When Denmark’s King Christian V launched a bloody conquest of Skåne, Sweden’s southernmost province and fertile breadbasket, he could hardly have foreseen that Copenhagen might one day find a more civilised way of spreading its influence.

Swedes are now facing a landgrab of a different sort: Denmark wants to rebrand Skåne as “Greater Copenhagen” to better compete with other city destinations.

“Size matters,” says Frank Jensen, mayor of Copenhagen and a champion of the project. Copenhagen is a small capital city but with a well known name internationally, he says.

“As Greater Copenhagen we can show it is something special – it is about creating a common identity that the entire region can get behind, and the Skåne region will also strengthen its position by profiling itself in this way.”

The Danes call it a collaboration and are counting on Swedish support. Growth in east Denmark and south Sweden is significantly lower than in competing cities such as Stockholm, Amsterdam or Hamburg, notes an official Danish document setting out a vision of Greater Copenhagen as a European metropolis, with the “international clout” to become a magnet for investment and innovation.

“Together we will have 3.8 million people, 11 universities with 150,000 students and many PhDs, so we will come up as an interesting place to locate your European or Scandinavian HQ,” says Jensen. “That is what it’s all about.”

The geographical area in question already has a name – Öresund if you are Swedish, or Øresund if you’re a Dane – encompassing Skåne and the Danish island of Zealand, on which Copenhagen is built. The official title of the famous bridge that joins the two countries is the Øresund (or Öresund) bridge. The region accounts for over a quarter of the combined GDP of Sweden and Denmark.

The trouble is nobody outside this bustling part of Scandinavia has ever heard of it. “The investment in the Øresund bridge and tunnel was always supposed to create an integrated region between east Denmark and south Sweden – the difference now is that it has become clear the region needs a name that is not simply Øresund,” said Greg Clark, international cities expert and advisor to megacities including London, São Paulo, Singapore, New York and Hong Kong.

[This] will take some time for the south Swedes to accept … But they will Greg Clark

Although examples of coordination across national borders are rare, the rebranding makes sense, he believes – global competition is real and fierce, and if two smaller cities become one big region they can mobilise their assets, populations and amenities.

“Cities in general, and Copenhagen in particular, have become more recognised and regarded as the primary territorial brands,” Clark says. “Copenhagen’s leadership on the climate change and liveability agendas has made it a recognised international brand.”

The two sides make a good fit. Denmark’s capital is overcrowded, corporate and expensive, while Malmö, Sweden’s third city across the water, has spare capacity, is relatively cheap, and has more of an enterprise economy. But Swedes feel somewhat ambiguous about being nominally subsumed by their Danish neighbours.

“I do not feel in the current situation that we are prepared to leave Malmö behind,” the city’s social democratic mayor, Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, said last year. “I think it would cause problems on the Swedish side.”

Instead of Greater Copenhagen, Stefan Johansson, head of the Invest in Skåne business lobby, would prefer to rebrand the Øresund region the “Scandinavia Bay Area”, alluding to the west coast of the US.

“Skåne is comparable to San Francisco’s Bay Area in terms of its food, wine, creative industries and science,” Johansson says, “and the Scandinavia Bay Area has the advantage of being a more neutral name, and more easily accepted in southern Sweden.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Copenhagen wants to become a metropolis with international clout. Photograph: Kateryna Negoda/Getty Images/Flickr RF

The government in Stockholm says the debate is a regional matter but this could mean Skåne would be overlooked for future investment if it starts to be seen as “semi-foreign”, according to Per Tryding, vice-president of the South Sweden Chamber of Commerce.

A metropolis needs 4 – 5 million people to be “somebody” on the world stage, Tryding admits, and Copenhagen is the only city in the region whose name has international recognition. Many southern Swedes already treat Copenhagen as their cultural capital, he says, with all the attractions of a big city that is much more accessible than Stockholm. “At least we have the ‘greater’ part of Greater Copenhagen,” he consoles himself. “Without us they are only Copenhagen.”

Sweden’s main business newspaper, Dagens Industri, recently came out in support of the rebranding, noting southern Sweden’s economic weakness and declaring that Copenhagen could become “Skåne’s bridge to the world”. But it also struck a note of caution about the potential loss of regional identity.

Using Copenhagen to describe parts of Sweden, even if just for promotional purposes, is a big step, Clark says. “That will take some time for the south Swedes to accept and use. But they will. The Swedes are clever like that.”