Kongens Enghave ("King's Meadow Garden"), also known as Sydhavnen ("South Harbour"), is a district in southern Copenhagen. The area has historically been one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Copenhagen, dissected by major transport corridors and characterized by social problems as well as industry along the harbour-front.
Since the turn of the millennium, this picture is starting to change. While the district in general remains a relatively poor neighbourhood with social challenges, the harbour-front areas of Sluseholmen and Teglholmen have undergone massive redevelopment into new residential neighbourhoods which have been praised for their architecture. A significant cluster of IT and telecommunications companies have also emerged in the area.
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Kongens Enghave covers an area of 4.46 km², has a population of 15,414 and a population density of 3,455 per km² (2008). It used to be one of 15 administrative districts of Copenhagen, but since an administrative reform in 2006-08, it has been part of the official district of Vesterbro/Kongens Enghave.[1]
Kongens Enghave is bounded by the Carlsberg area to the north, Vesterbro to the north-east and Valby to the west, while Copenhagen Harbour to the east and south separates it from Amager Vest.
The Kongens Enghave district developed around the heavy industry of the Southern Docklands. The residential areas were built to satisfy a demand for workers for the many local companies and it has thus always been considered a working class neighbourhood. Gradually, Kongens Enghave gained a reputation for being the area in Denmark with most people on social welfare, the lowest education rate and life expectancy and high incidence of all major social problems.[2]
From around the turn of the millennium, the picture has partially started to change. A large number of multinational companies have located in the area, while at the same time, the redevelopment of the harbour-front into attractive residential and mixed-use areas have attracted new residents. Dramatically rising real-estate prices and a shortage of cheap accommodation in Copenhagen during the last half of the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s have also drawn new income groups and students to the area.
The parts of Kongens Enghave attracting most attention today are the redeveloped harbour-front areas of Sluseholmen and Teglholmen. In particular, the Sluseholmen Canal District is generally recognized as one of the most successful new neighbourhoods in Copenhagen, for which it won the 2009 Danish Urban Planning Award.[3]
The most important green spaces of the Kongens Enghave district include Vestre Cemetery and the semi-natural Sydhavnstippen area.
A cluster of Danish headquarters of multinational companies such as Nokia, Sonofon, Philips, TDC, Statoil, DaimlerChrysler and BMW Group has formed in the Sydhavnen area.[4]
There are two S-train stations located in Kongens Enghave: Sydhavn station and Sjælør station, both of which are on the Køge radial of the S-train network. A third S-train station, serviced by trains on Vestbanen and Frederikssundbanen, is located in Vesterbro, just on the border to Kongens Enghave.
Copenhagen Harbour Buses line 704 serves Sluseholmen and Teglholmen.
There are also regular buses connecting from Mozarts Plads to the city centre.
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