A sustainable growth
Helsingborg is a city on the move, a city that’s being built upon like never before, the population is soaring and big changes are underway. At the same time, it’s a city growing sustainably.
As the population increases, it is important to ensure that employment does too. While the population is estimated to have grown to 177,000 people by 2035, the amount of job opportunities are expected to have grown in parallel.
To ease the burden on the collective resources within the city, Skånetrafiken and Helsingborg City are adopting a system of tram-style busses, to be implemented in the summer of 2019. The Helsingborg Express will take the quickest and most direct route into the city centre, offering a comfortable and sustainable method of travel.
H+ is the largest urban renewal project in Helsingborg’s modern history. By 2035, a million square metres will play host to 5000 new residences, office spaces, schools, commercial quarters, restaurants and meeting spaces. The aim is to develop the new city area of Oceanhamnen, as well as the existing city quarters of the University area, ‘Husar-quarter’ and ‘Gåsebäck’. These quarters are today comprised of everything from abandoned development areas to neighbourhoods with a mosaic of buildings, businesses and people. The H+ area is located centrally, near to both Helsingborg C and Ramlösa stations, providing a strong foundation for sustainable urban development. One of the ambitions is to link the southern city district to the city centre, the new districts of Oceanhamnen and the University quarter.
A fixed link between Helsingborg and Helsingör is an important aspect of the city’s future development. Vehicular traffic will, thanks to this connection, be diverted from the central areas of the city, resulting in less congestion, less noise and better air quality.
Travel times within Greater Copenhagen are constantly decreasing, which gives the residents greater opportunities to live on one side of the strait and work on the other. This makes it easier for companies in Helsingborg to find the right workforce and makes Helsingborg a more attractive option for the business world and foreign investors. Traffic is projected to increase in the future, due among other reasons, to the new transport link between Denmark and Germany (The Fehmarn belt) that is planned to open in 2028. A fixed HH connection in the northern Öresund Region relieves the existing pressure on the Öresund bridge, while reducing the region’s vulnerability by having more than a singular travel option between Denmark and Sweden.
Skånebanan that reaches from Helsingborg to Kristianstad and links all urban areas in between, is today one of Sweden’s busiest single rail tracks. Region Skåne and the municipalities along the route have agreed on a number of starting points that would develop the Skåne track and the towns along it. A strong Skåne-track links all of Skåne and cuts the travel time to and from Kristianstad to 45 minutes, down from today’s 80 minutes.