The government’s plan popularly referred to as “The Normalization Plan,” will transform this prime location just minutes walk from downtown Copenhagen, from a space of alterity and opposition into a marketable place comprised of privately owned homes and businesses. This paper explores how control over urban space is integral to maintaining Danish national identity that is premised on restricted conceptions of cultural citizenship and belonging. Two questions are central to this inquiry: 1) How are social and political marginality being constructed, negotiated and resisted in Denmark?; 2) What insights are generated when groups defined as ‘marginal’ by the state challenge state authority and compete for control of urban spaces? The policing and privatization of Christiania is indicative of broader challenges to maintaining an ethnically and culturally homogeneous “white” Danish nation, the reformation of citizenship and the welfare state, and the project of creating a space of European nations. Following Gupta and Ferguson’s call for a critical, ethnographically grounded consideration of the spatialized production of difference this paper is an ethnographically grounded consideration of the spatialized production of difference that examines how control over urban spaces are generative; creating contending social imaginaries and oppositional identities that destabilize state projects seeking to eradicate opposition by controlling the urban environment. In 2002, a new government was elected in Denmark, and Christiania’s future as a legitimized “social experiment” under the previous Social Democratic government was in jeopardy. The new government, elected on a neoliberal agenda that promised significant reform of the welfare state, began plans to “normalize” the squatter community. The goals were to end the flourishing, illegal hash trade, privatize the space and then develop the area through state generated privatization. This process colloquially entitled, “The Normalization Plan,” cannabis indoor greenhouse will effectively displace Christiania’s many residents who cannot afford market rates, and will transform this prime location, just minutes walk from downtown Copenhagen, from a space of alterity and opposition into a marketable neighborhood comprised of privately owned homes and businesses.
Christiania is not numbered, arranged and orderly. Order is intuited, embodied and experienced, not marked and organized through the nomenclature and disciplinary sciences of the state. There are few signs, mostly for businesses, and the houses are named not addressed. For example, I lived in Karlsvogn or the Farmer’s Wagon which was also known as the home of my two roommates. My house did not have an address, and was not located on a map, but it was well-known as one of the oldest cooperative houses in Christiania. The history of the place gave it an identity. Those residing within it became associated with this history because the house was an activist house, and by association, those living within it were linked to the activists. State-generated Normalization and the reformation of the built environment are strategies of discipline that aims to silence the oppositional histories in order to replace the contentious past with the grand narratives of nation-building, military past and the ‘rational’ organization of the market. According to Foucault , normalization is created through a range of disciplinary apparatuses that instantiate “the subject” who is disciplined into being through the restriction of bodily movements in carefully constructed spaces of control and surveillance. The most famous example is Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a potent symbol of self- discipline and spatial control . Foucault argues using the example of urban plagues, that normalization functions through the creation of surveiled and orderly spaces structured on formal scientific systems of evaluation, production and investigation. The transformation of unruly and undisciplined bodies into coherent, self-regulating subjects occurs through the control of spaces and the creation of manageable populations. Discipline and control are achieved through scientific disciplines that naturalize the use of timetables, regulate embodied practices through repetitive exercises, and the creation knowledges that rank and order, placing limits on practices through pathologization and criminalization. The various apparatuses and accompanying knowledges encourage subject’s complicity in their self regulation. Foucault’s normalization is about foreclosures, silences, and limitations on practices deemed excessive. Difference and the possibility of authentic politics are limited. In Christiania, state generated Normalization is a strategy of control, but one that is overtly using the built environment to control and eradicate, and subvert. Christiania’s Normalization is about privatization, the management of dissent through spatial strategies, and the use of overt force to silence oppositional voices. periment, which has been labeled a failure, and transform the space into a multi-use, privately owned area. A new Christiania is being imagined and forcefully created. The new urban space will be fully integrated into the surrounding urban area complete with paved roads, additional parking and a new bridge to reduce driving time from the center of Copenhagen.
I agree with Kathleen Bubinas who asserts that, “Politically-dictated urban renewal programs restrict access to cityspace by those racial and ethnic groups deemed or publicly constructed as “dangerous” . Since 1980 there has been an ongoing process of transforming the greater Copenhagen area into a regional economic power . Part of this process is the concept of “Creative Copenhagen,” and the privatization of public lands in Sydhaven, Øresund, and Christiania. “Creative Copenhagen” is a state generated plan to repackage and develop the cityspace, and Christiania’s privatization is central to making Copenhagen attractive to investment. Privatizing Christiania, a prime location just minutes from downtown, would integrate this valuable area into Copenhagen, and raise property values while neutralizing its oppositional character. A similar process of repackaging the cityscape is occurring in cities throughout the Europe and the United States. Setha Low makes the point that: “Increasing privatization through public/private partnerships between municipalities and local businesses has transformed such places as Bryant Park and Union Square in the center of New York City into safe, middle-class environments maintained by strict surveillance and police control” . Like other cities, Copenhagen is being transformed into an elite urban space that is eradicating subversive, contentious places through increased police presence and the use of surveillance technologies. Christiania’s transformation from an interstitial, danger zone of alterity into a managed and marketable space is integrally interlinked to making Copenhagen fit for elite consumption and hi-tech production. The Creative Copenhagen plan is a response to economic globalization and regional development initiative which Hansen argues, “must be seen against the background of competition between cities.” Creative Copenhagen is a strategy which attempts to ensure Copenhagen’s place among European Cities by marketing an image of entrepreneurial creativity in the North . In order to ensure Copenhagen’s place as a city attractive to capital investment,cannabis growing equipment public lands are sold to private corporations that have significantly less accountability to the electorate and when the area is developed the poor and marginal residents are displaced . The increasing privatization of public lands suggests a strategy of close cooperation with private firms and organizations as a means of ensuring global competitiveness. The Creative Copenhagen development plan is also an extension of EU economic development policy aimed at transforming Copenhagen into a node in the European market. Regional development policy focuses on the regeneration of urban areas and is supported by EU Cohesion Funds1 . Competing visions of the urban built environment 2 are part of transnational processes reforming cities throughout Europe. This neoliberal imaginary is integral to transforming Christiania into a simulacrum of itself so that the city of Copenhagen can be marketed, rehabilitated and fully integrated into a European city.
The impacts of these processes are evident in struggles over meaning, history and place, providing insights into the political implications and the social impacts of the reconfiguration of cities. By neoliberal imaginary I mean a mixture of neoliberalism, which describes a form of renewed economic liberalism and a political philosophy which reestablished itself in the 1970’s, combined with the establishment of a emergent social imaginary . Neoliberal imaginary is a political philosophy which guides social, political and economic interactions. It operates as a political philosophy, presented as a transparent good and logical approach to the management of society in a democratic modern nation. Proponents reject earlier forms of government intervention into private life and the economy epitomized by the welfare state. Instead, progress and social justice are achieved through the free-market, individual choice and accountability, with the state playing a minor, but supportive role to entrepreneurial citizens by ensuring a fair playing field. In 2002, the government announced that Christiania will be “closed.” This new government, elected on a neoliberal agenda promised significant reform to the welfare state promising to transform the bureaucracy intensive structure into a trimmed down, efficient “minimal” welfare state. I began my research during the summer of 2003 and Christiania was, once again, in the political limelight. “Normalization” had become a national buzzword and provided the government with certain rhetorical strategies to publicly defend and legitimize their plan to privatize the area. The Normalization Plan, bureaucratic nomenclature for a complex set of political and cultural processes, was taken-up by the media and transformed into a catch-all phrase. Normalization encapsulated state authority. By contrast, the state argued Normalization was a transparent, lawful process that would simply make things more equitable by integrating and legalizing the Christiania area. Most of all, Normalization came to mean the ending of “special treatment” for Christianitter. The state argued communal ownership and control over public space provided an unfair advantage, one that was not available the rest of the law abiding Danes. In Christiania, The Normalization Plan signaled “the death of Christiania’s spirit;” the replacement of autonomy by state bureaucracy and impersonal laws. The Normalization Plan entails several key changes to the legal, spatial and economic management of the Christiania Area. The first step of normalization was to transform Christiania from a quasi-legal into an illegal space. The initial phase terminated the legal rights of residence and management that had been afforded the Christianitter in 1986. On June 4, 2004 the government unanimously approved the new lawthat ended the scarce legal protections afforded residents of Christiania. The goal was to remove any legal protection offered under the“Christiania Law,” which provided the scant legal protections offered by the social democratic government in 1989. Despite the popular and political support Christiania enjoyed as a space of cultural experimentation and freedom L205 was passed unanimously by the Danish Parliament . With the new legal framework in position, the government began implementing a series of changes that would end Christiania’s self-government, privatize the communally held properties, and the government argued, integrate the community fully into the market economy thus providing all Danish citizens access to the space through the implementation of neoliberal principles of freedom of choice and the “fair” mechanisms of value and competition operating in a free market. Communally owned houses would be privatized, placed on the market, and sold at fair market value. Ideally all citizens would have the opportunity and right to purchase into the community, assuming they have the resources. According to the government, the clear and fair rules of the market would replace Christiania’s labyrinthine and socially opaque system. Under the old system, Christianitter decide by vote who lives in their community. As houses become available, a social network of would-be residents is alerted through their contacts in the community. New residents are often chosen based on their commitment to Christiania and their qualities as “good neighbors.” Commitment takes the form of providing support, which often translates into free labor; working for the good of the community in a way that is perceived as selfless. It is extremely difficult to get a place to live, even on a temporary basis as I found out during my fieldwork. As one of my contacts said, “You must have very good connections to get a place in Christiania.”In one respect, the decision-making process based on an Arendtian ideal of dialogue, deliberation and consensus is being heavily critiqued by the state, despite the stated desire to implement similar principles such as dialogue, open communication and transparency using the internet. Christianitter often remark that the “state does not know what to do with us. We agree be consensus and that takes a long time.” Decision-making through deliberation by involved citizens is a hallmark of liberal democracy.