Helsingborg is the only town in Sweden where it is possible to stand in the centre, watching a ferry leave the town and dock abroad. Ferries to Denmark ply the Sound around the clock. It is not a surprise that the town has become a centre for transport and communication operators. No wonder there is a programme called College of Communication at Campus Helsingborg. Trade and communication, manufacturing, health and social care, are the sectors that employs most people. Helsingborg is not only a place to, study, reside and work in. It is a town to be lived in and it is high quality to live in Helsingborg. On summer mornings you can see people in beach-robes wandering straight through town. The beaches and the woods are never far away in Helsingborg. Time and again attention has been drawn to the town, thanks to its investments in cultural and environmental matters. World-renowned companies like IKEA, Unilever, and Pharmacia have not unexpectedly decided to establish themselves in Helsingborg.

Healthy Cities
Since Helsingborg became a Healthy City in 1999 health promotion has been an important issue on the political agenda and a much higher awareness of what determinates our health is shown. Important links have been developed between those areas, which are of strategic significance in achieving the goals of the Healthy Cities mission, like Agenda 21 and Urban Planning. The awareness of health determinants and these links are clearly shown in the long-term urban renewal project called “the South in Transition”: The strategy is to make the geographical area “The South” attractive by physical changes in order to facilitate more enterprises, make a healthier environment and raise the social cohesion in the area. It is an outspoken prerequisite that the renewal must be done with great care for both cultural and environmental matters as well as for the people living there. Another prerequisite is that all changes should be carried out in a way that optimal conditions will be created for a sustainable development. In this respect the Town’s policies for a Healthy City and the Local Agenda 21 form for the political and theoretical base for the regeneration process. A third prerequisite is the involvement of inhabitants, shopkeepers, property-owners and local enterprises. Their views and their wishes should be taken into account in the process of change. The South in Transition has been so successful in the way it’s been managed and organised so the project has become a model for how the rest of the municipality has organised it’s local democracy development work.


Read more from Helsingborg City Council sustainable development web-page (in Swedish)

Read more about the plans for sustainable development in Helsingborg from the Plan for Sustainable Development  (English), (Swedish)