Christianitter have forestalled state action through their de-centralized structure, and used it to legitimize and explain their uniqueness and autonomy. However, rather than supporting the developing democratic form, the neoliberal government has responded by labeling their consensus democracy a failure. Rather than aiding this alternative political and social formation, the state intends to put into place rules that the state argues are fair, legal and intelligible. The assumption is that market rules ensure “open” access to this valuable property. Whereas the old system screened new residents and admitted them through a voting system, which located control within the community, the market removes individual and communal levels of agency and responsibility. Regardless of the type of rule structure in place, entrance to the community will still be regulated. Certain people, those who can afford to pay market rates, will be allowed to live in the community. The enclave community, with its convoluted rules of residence and decision-making would be replaced by an open, transparent, and so the neoliberal rhetoric goes, fair system that allowed all citizens the possibility of living in this highly prized community. Of course, the neoliberal imaginary is premised on the illusion of obtaining economic equality through the market and refuses to acknowledge that Christiania is, first and foremost, a creation of the poor who transformed the vacated space of the Danish military past into a thriving community. Christiania was created in response to the lack of affordable housing, which still plagues Copenhagen today. It seems now these entrepreneurs are victims of their own success,cannabis grow table having transformed the bare utilitarian space into a lush living space. The second step of The Normalization Plan was to end the flourishing illegal hash trade. The police arrested approximately seventy people associated with the drug trade, confiscating all of the structures and paraphernalia related to the sale of cannabis products.
An early morning raid in March 2004 rousted Christiania’s Pushers from their beds, and as the police collected the sleepy hash sellers, they also systematically removed all traces of the illegal trade from Pusher Street. The few remaining booths, heaters, benches and paraphernalia were confiscated and trucked away to be used as evidence. Once a formidable and well visited space where the law was openly challenged through daily commercial and informal exchanges, Pusher Street is now occupied by a few remaining who have claimed the street as theirs, protecting it from incursions from outside sellers seeking to make a profit in this famous space. Pusher Street was now a ghost of itself, reduced to an image on tourist maps. The police are back. As I returned from the library, I witnessed a woman being taken roughly into custody by two police officers dressed in riot gear. There are police on Pusher Street, talking together in groups of 10-15. The wear bright, blue helmets with shields raised. The presence of the police is stifling, the street is blocked, and it takes intentionality and a sense of purpose to walk the small street that is so very quiet. Ironically, the police make it possible for me to take pictures and video record, an impossible task when Pushers ran the space. Taking pictures was a potentially dangerous affair, unsuspecting tourists have had their cameras ripped from their necks and smashed. Large graffiti of a camera with a large, red stripe through it is meant to dissuade photography. Pushers do not like their pictures taken. The large brightly painted boulders at the entrance and exit to Pusher Street have been removed so that the police vans can move in an out more freely. Soon after the police leave for the evening, and they always leave at night, the boulders will be put back, and the street will likely erupt into drunken laughter and loud music. However, the bustling, energetic and somewhat oppressive feel of Pusher Street is vacant.
The wooden booths, where hash was sold from paper plates displayed on tables, have been torn down. All the Pushers were arrested yesterday morning before dawn, taken from their beds. Around 74 people have been taken into custody by the police. So, there will be only a few clandestine exchanges tonight. In the past, before the massive raid brought hundreds of police to Christiania in the early hours of the morning, Pusher Street was the commercial and social center of Christiania. Official estimates put the total of annual visitors from 1-3 million, visitors who come to look, buy and experience. Before today, raids were common but the Pushers hid their wares, waited and hoped the police would leave quickly. Then it was back to the business of selling hash and marijuana to Christiania’s many visitors. No longer. Within Christiania the closure of Pusher Street is fraught with tension. For some, Pusher Street was sapping the community of its vitality and legitimacy, reducing Christiania to a parody of itself. From this point of view, Christiania became synonymous with Pusher Street, drugs, illegality and marginality. They perceived the community as plagued by the affects of the professionalization of the hash trade such as intensification of policing, raids, criminality, violence and the commercialization of the community. The anti-consumption and anti-capitalist ideology that formed the basis of Christiania’s development as an alternative society was openly mocked by the intensely guarded space of Pusher Street where millions of Danish Kroner were made every year, and where grim faced Pushers were constantly on the look-out for undercover cops, and suspecting a raid at anytime. Large dogs trained to flee with packs full of hash sat around the pusher stalls, attacking people that were ignorant enough to run through the street. For others who support the Pushers, their incarceration signals the seriousness of the situation that drains the community of a network of support and resources the Pushers command. Also, the central revenue generating space in the community is now closed and this impacts all the businesses in Christiania and those who earn a living there.
Pusher Street may have been the locus of the government’s ire, but many deemed this an excuse. Rather than legalizing cannabis, the new government sought to criminalize Christiania through its policing of Pusher Street. In sum, through the closure of Pusher Street and the arrest of the pushers the government accomplished several important objectives: to end the centralized and open hash trade in Copenhagen, forcing dealers into other locations and destabilizing the cohesiveness the network; dividing the community between those who support the dealers and those against them; and most importantly, crippling the local economy, which translates into reducing the number of visitors and thereby the potential number of Christiania’s supporters as the government takes the next steps of privatization and integration into Copenhagen. The third and arguably final phase of The Normalization Plan entails a re-organization and commodification of the space 4.The first step of the third phase is the removal of auto constructed structures built by Christianitter over the past thirty-five years; the second step is modernization of the housing; the third step is restoring the historic buildings; the fourth step is the creation of a historic park area; and the final step is the transformation of the communally held property into private residences and the erection of modern living space. Residences and businesses designated as illegal, unsafe or unsanitary will be removed in order to modernize and,cannabis drying trays as the rhetoric goes, “open up the area.” The center of the community, known as Fabrikken , is the prime location for housing development. Whereas the areas near the water that are located on the 16th century military fortifications and embankments built by Christian IV will be returned to their “original” state. In order to accomplish this twenty-five self-built houses on the embankments, often considered to be architecturally unique and impressive artistic expressions, will be demolished. All vegetation, including trees will be removed in order to create a public park area that celebrates Denmark’s military past. The squat will be divided into three sections – residential, business and park. The area will be developed and privatized, houses demolished and the vast majority of residents displaced. When Christiania was established in the 1970’s there was high unemployment, a lack of affordable and modern housing, and a large proportion of highly educated but unemployed youth. The closure of the military barracks, centrally located to downtown Copenhagen, signaled the retreat of the military from the area and the possibility of transforming acres of open space into a community. This task was taken on by Christianitter who have, by their own volition and with limited economic support, provided a space for unemployed youth, social dropouts and those who did not fit neatly into Danish society. The issue of affordable housing remains a critical one in 2006 as the election of Ritt Bjeargaard as Copenhagen’s major on the platform of building 5000 new homes in five years attests. The three phases of Normalization are part of broader developments occurring in Copenhagen. Christiania’s privatization and cleaning-up, the removal and incarceration of the pushers, and the closure of one of Copenhagen’s most visited and notorious tourist sites are integral to reforming the Danish capital into an important city in the European market, and I argue, representative of a neoliberal imaginary that is reforming the entire welfare state in Denmark. The result of Normalization is the commodification of this oppositional space, which is in line with the neoliberalist agenda of the Danish government. The strategy is to cleaning- up Christiania by removing the Pushers, privatize the houses and place them on the market. Thus guaranteeing Christiania is a marketable, manageable, and integrated part of the urban cityscape.
Christiania is becoming a pale vision of itself, as the contentious, disorderly and critical community is gradually policed into silence and forcibly integrated.If successful, The Normalization Plan will end 35 years of oppositional practices, incarcerate or relocate those who oppose it, and demolish the auto-constructed homes and businesses.Socio-spatial management is a state strategy that controls unruly populations through the reformation of the built environment.Christiania was formed and maintained by its relationship with the state and the Danish national community. In general terms, the state apparatus was perceived of as essentially repressive, serving only to confound the Christanitter’s ability to create an alternative community. Therefore, Christianitter were most likely to define themselves in terms of what they are not. A collective sense of separateness resulted from the process of boundary creation between Christiania and the state. The Social Democrat’s tentative endorsement of Christiania over the past 30 years and the general public support must be placed in a broader context that reflects ideas about the nature of the “good society” and the import role of social welfare. State tolerance towards Christiania can be linked to Denmark’s political development and modernization, which has been described as an “Enlightenment without a revolution,” a nation created with a mythical heroic peasant, who is the embodiment of the values of education, freedom, and equality . The formation of a national peasant identity took political form in social democracy; a continuation and transformation of the ideals manifest in Lutheranism, parochial political culture, popular movements and the ideological edifice of freedom and equality . I argue that Christiania’s closure signals broader changes occurring to the ideological basis and form of Danish social democracy, changed that are currently being implemented by the conservative Venstre party led by Anders Fog Rasmussen. In response, Christiania and its supporters drew on notions of the cultural importance of their community as a space of difference in a country that is having significant issues with managing difference in the form of its religious and ethnic others evidenced by the controversy and strong opposition to the publication in October 2005 to a series of twelve cartoons caricaturing the prophet Muhammad. For many this controversy has less to do with freedom of the press and expression than it does with increasing xenophobia and emergent radicalizations occurring in Denmark and Scandinavia . The interactions between the community, the state and civil society are a means of understanding these wider issues. A spatial approach, which is attentive to discordant and competing versions also demonstrates how seemingly taken-for-granted notions and commonplace practices are contested, and illuminates how dynamics of power are uneven and fraught with tension.