About the area:
Malmo is Sweden’s third-largest city, which has a good-looking medieval centre, a sandy beach and a cosmopolitan and forward-looking shopping and restaurant scene.
It has 280,144 inhabitants (2007)(about 605,000 in the metro area). Malmo was one of the earliest and most industrialized towns of Scandinavia, but until the turn of the millennium had been struggling with the adaptation to post-industrialism. Since then, Malmo has become a new city, with impressive architectural developments, attracting new biotech and IT companies, and particularly students through Malmo University.
The city contains many historic buildings and parks, and is also a commercial center for the western part of Scania. During the last few years a university college (University College of Malmo) has been established and the city is now trying to focus on education, arts and culture. Malmo was ranked #4 in Grist Magazine's "15 Green Cities" list in 2007.[4]