•Employers can hire and fire when needed, without incurring employment growth, but the city’s strategy for creating employment a high cost for firing employees; opportunities is fully dedicated to tackling climate change. •Employees who have contributed to the unemployment insurance fund receive up to two years of unemployment Overall, however, job hunting in Denmark is not particularly benefits upon losing their jobs; different to job hunting in other EU countries, where jobs fairs, •The Danish government ensures that education andcareer events, direct applications, and networking are the retraining programs are available to unemployed people; primary ways to find a job in the city. According to the Statistics •The state provides a subsistence allowance for people Denmark website, the country’s unemployment rate increased experiencing illness, divorce, or unemployment. to 5.6 percent in May 2020, representing the highest jobless rate since December 2013. Denmark has no statutory minimum wage. Instead, the relatively high wages that Danish employees receive are set 5.2 Access to schools through negotiations between employees and labor unions. Sixty-seven percent of Danish workers are union members The city’s objectives related to education and children’s access (Denmark.dk website, 2020). to school cohere with the UN’s SDGs, and the City Council has established specific initiatives to ensure continuous The Danish flexicurity model has helped to make Copenhagen improvement within the education system (Kurt Houlberg & an attractive business location for international companies. Co, 2016). These initiatives aim to: Here, hard work and a healthy work-life balance are considered • Increase the share of students scoring top marks in Danish priorities, and the city is a European leader in this regard. and math year by year; • Ensure that at least 80 percent of students perform well in The dominant economic sectors in Copenhagen are life state testing of reading and math; sciences, information and communication technologies, • Decrease the proportion of students scoring poorly in cleantech, and the creative and entertainment industries. national tests year by year; Denmark’s IT cluster, located in Copenhagen, employs over • Reduce the impact that children’s social backgrounds have one hundred thousand people (Denmark.dk website, 2020). on their academic performance. Temporary work is common within the city, which allows for a • Additionally, strategies have been defined to ensure that the fluid labor market. city achieves these objectives: • Implementation of guidelines for daycare in public schools; To ensure easy access to job market information for Danes and • Ensuring equality of chances and a good life for all; job seekers from abroad, the City Council has defined objectives • Implementation of policy for disadvantaged urban areas; to ensure that employment services are adequately used and • Implementing antibullying initiatives in all schools; advertised. Those objectives are: • Introducing coding classes in public schools, doing so in •The city will help businesses to find employees with the right collaboration with businesses; competences and support unemployed people with adequate • Establishing the Copenhagen Academy, a project for children training. Mathiesen et al. (2019) state that “over the course aimed at working on their social heritage’s impact on of 10 years, Copenhagen has committed to completely lifelong learning, through funding for evening schools and removing the city’s 2 million tons of carbon footprint, even as free facilities for associations.; the city continues to grow, with 100,000 new inhabitants and • Reducing absences in daycare centers and public schools. 20,000 jobs” (This is how Copenhagen plans to go carbon- neutral by 2025); 5.2.1 The children and youth administration •The City Council tries to match small- and medium-In Copenhagen, the Children and Youth Administration employs sized businesses with a pool of eleven universities and around eighteen thousand people and aims to coordinate academic institutions (Business and growth policy - City of activities and services for about one hundred thousand children Copenhagen, 2015-2020). and young people (The Child and Youth Administration, City of Copenhagen Website, 2020). The administration’s main Copenhagen is home to one-third of all of Denmark’s jobs. In line remit covers daycare centers, special needs institutions, with many other international cities, to create jobs, increase growth, psychological advice services, and various medical services. and attract international investment, Copenhagen is determined Since 2015, the City of Copenhagen has increased its efforts to to grow in a green way. The private sector continues to drive help homeless youths (TheCopenhagenPost, 2016), focusing on 130 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021