"Continental Malmö - city of parks, art,... " a Malmö Travel Page by Sjalen

Malmö became my new hometown in October 2002. This is what I have discovered of it so far...:)

As I was here a few times when I was little, I can now notice a distinct difference from those earlier visits. People from the Scania region have always been proud of themselves (see my Skåne page) but this is nevertheless a city very much aware of its qualities compared to a bit of a slump in the 80s and early 90s when most heavy industry closed down and no new identity had been found.

Beginning as a small, sandy fishing village, Malmö grew when the abundance of herring made it an important Hanseatic town which even became Denmark's second largest town and got its own castle. The town's importance finally declined when herring numbers did, and in the last few centuries, it has been a working class harbour town with shipping and manufacturing of goods such as textile and food and suffered heavily from the closure of all this. It is now very much bustling with new energy since the opening of the Öresund Bridge to Copenhagen (where I work) and the new UN Maritime university and Malmö university college. The famous wharf crane that symbolised the city for ages has been taken down and sold to South Korea and in its stead has come the architectural wonder of Västra Hamnen. The chocolate and socks factories are long gone, whilst in their place has come IT companies, grand hotel- and leasure plans, and commuting Danes who want to escape the higher Danish living costs and tighter Danish immigration laws for their foreign partners. A visit to Sweden's third city should be one where you realise that Berlin is geographically closer than Stockholm and the locals know it!

But Malmö is not just new developments and fun. Being a former industrial city, it saw lots of immigrants in the 60s when Sweden was crying out for labour all over Europe. Today, the factories have disappeared, leading to higher unemployment for workers and of course the immigrants are the first to suffer. A bus tour around the city will reveal the segregation with the rich western coastal parts of the city versus the apartment blocks in the east. The city has to work hard at solving segregation problems. To me, coming from further north with hills and forests, the city also suffers from being on a flat plain which the wind howls across in winter :)))