Originally much smaller than today's island, Amager's modern history begins with King Christian II inviting Dutch farmers to dam and grow the fields of the island to supply fresh vegetables to the king and the city. Coupled with successful fishing the island grew into one of the wealthiest rural areas in the country. As Copenhagen grew, as did the pressure to populate the island, Copenhagen spilled out on the island in the 19th century with the construction of sundbyerne . Some farmers still maintain a small stronghold on the southern tip of the island to this day, with many old farmhouses and small traces of the Dutch ancestry. With development the fortunes of the islanders faded, and the island became long a forgotten district of Copenhagen, out of sight and out of mind in the heads of the local population. Despite playing host to the city's airport, people mainly saw the tedious transportation by bus through the slow moving transportation network as a necessary nuisance; in fact the most common colloquial name for the island was Lorteøen or Shit Island in English, a canny reference to the fact that Amager was mainly build of landfill and sewage from the rest of Copenhagen. The islanders or Amaricans responded with a fierce local patriotism some to the point where they flat out refused to leave the island.This all changed when the Danish and Swedish governments finally ended years and years of bickering, and agreed to construct a bridge from Copenhagen to Malmö, and the residents would finally get transportation links to rest of the city; a highway and railway connection was constructed across the island to connect the city with the airport and the new bridge. This in turn meant property value rose, and the municipal council then decided to sell a huge patch of unused land to finance a new subway system, and hence the island even got two new subway lines. Today new development and construction in the capital almost exclusively takes place on Amager and if you are into modern architecture, the area's of Havneholmen , Islands Brygge and Ørestad is a veritable hotspot.