Island magic and the making of a transnational region

How can an artificial island and a bridge-building project shape the dreams and plans for a transnational region? In this article I examine the making of the Oresund region of Denmark and Sweden by analyzing the intertwining of bridge construction and region building, from the early dreams and plans, to the actual construction phase, to the ceremonial opening in 2000, and to the difficult transition into an everyday transportation system. The ways in which the construction was organized and staged came to mirror some important trends of the so-called new economy and many of its buzzwords. Engineering and imagineering were combined in new ways.