The Capital Region of Denmark (Region Hovedstaden) is the easternmost administrative region of Denmark, established on January 1, 2007 as part of the 2007 Danish Municipal Reform, which abolished the traditional counties (Danish plural: amter, singular: amt) and set up five regions. At the same time, smaller municipalities were merged into larger units, cutting the number of municipalities from 271 before 1 January 2006, when Ærø Municipality was created, to 98. The Capital Region has 29 municipalities. The reform was implemented on January 1, 2007. The main task for the Danish regions are hospitals and healthcare. It is not to be confused with the Copenhagen Metropolitan Area nor with the Øresund Region. Unlike the counties (1970-2006) (Danish Amtskommune literally county municipality) the regions are not municipalities and are thus not allowed to have coat of arms, but only logotypes, and cannot "shuffle money around" from one area of expenditure to another area of expenditure, that is, use money for any other purpose than has been stated specifically, but must pay money not used back rather like departments or agencies of the central government. The regions do not levy any taxes but are financed only through block grants.
For population growth, see Regions of Denmark.
For information about the reform, see Municipalities of Denmark.
Municipalities of the regions can be accessed from the Municipalities of Denmark template at the bottom of the page.
The Capital Region of Denmark is one of five regions in Denmark and consists of the municipalities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, the former counties of Copenhagen and Frederiksborg, and the regional municipality of Bornholm. In Danish the name is Region Hovedstaden. It borders Zealand and Sweden's Skåne County via the Øresund Bridge.
Denmark's largest lake (Danish sø), Arresø, lies 43 kilometers (28 miles) northwest of Copenhagen. There are several other lakes, the deepest in Denmark being Furesø, 14.5 km (9 miles) northwest of Copenhagen, which is the namesake of Furesø Municipality. Among several forests the region also has Gribskov, namesake of Gribskov Municipality. The forest park Dyrehaven is just north of Copenhagen (and east of Furesø) in Gentofte and Lyngby-Taarbæk.
Geologically the region lies in the northern part of Denmark which is rising because of post-glacial rebound, making lakes out of former inlets and bays, of which Arresø is one example, having extended in a northwesterly direction as a part of Brødemose Sund into Kattegat. (The land is rising the most in the world (9 millimeters every year) in Furuögrund (Swedish Wikipedia Furuögrund), the northeastern part of Skellefteå Municipality, north of Kvarken.) Because of the mobility of the sand dunes, forests have been planted along the coast of Kattegat in the municipalities of Helsingør, Gribskov, and Halsnæs.
Without the remote island municipality Bornholm, located 150 km southeast of Copenhagen and 135 km directly east of Vordingborg Municipality (Møn) (across the Baltic Sea), and regarding only the land area of the 28 municipalities in and around Copenhagen, between 1,800 and 1,850 sq km (between 700 and 715 sq. mi.), 1,000 inhabitants per sq km will be reached in 2019 with a population as of 1 January 2019 at 1,795,990 persons, and 39,572 persons living on Bornholm.
For the purpose of the road and rail connection to Øresund Bridge land has been added to Amager, which has a tunnel connecting it with the artificial island Peberholm just south of Saltholm. The land area of east Denmark is approximately 9,622 sq km (year?) (3,715 sq mi), possibly slightly more with new land added because of housing projects in the north of Copenhagen Municipality and the bridge and tunnels including the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link and other traffic infrastructure projects. A new Copenhagen-Ringsted Line is being built to increase transport capacity and relieve congestion in Roskilde and the narrow 9-9.5 mile isthmus between Roskilde Fjord and Køge Bugt by moving international and national train traffic to the new train line and only keeping local and regional traffic.
Before 2007, a Danish Capital Region (Hovedstadsregionen) did exist, but it did not cover exactly the same area and did not have the same legal functions.
