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99% Invisible
Christiania
00:40:04
In Copenhagen, Christiania—a commune born from rebellion—now faces mounting pressures that could force it to choose between its radical ideals and survival.
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- [00:03]
Roman Mars
Apple Card is the perfect card for your holiday shopping. When you use Apple Card on your iPhone, you'll earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, including products at Apple like a new iPhone 16 or Apple Watch Ultra. Apply now in the Wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more@applecard.com this episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. Some things should be boring, like banking. Boring is safe and reliable. You don't want your bank to be surprising. Surprising is for podcasts about seemingly insignificant inventions that impact our lives, not banks. PNC bank strives to be boring with your money so you can be happily fulfilled with your life. PNC bank Brilliantly boring since 1865 Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a service mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. PNC bank national association member FDIC this is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In the year 1623, Christian IV, King of Denmark and Norway, built a long series of moats and ramparts just across from central Copenhagen on the eastern edge of the city's harbor. For much of the 17th century, the fortification protected the city from Swedish invasion. In the early 19th century, the Danish government added artillery barracks, and in the 20th century, they they filled in the surrounding swamps to make room for a modern military base, even as the rest of Copenhagen grew around it. That is, until 1971, when the sprawling fortress in the center of the city transformed into something else entirely.
- [01:50]
John Ben Carlson
And it started off with the kids who had, of course, been wondering what goes on in there. They saw the soldiers coming in and out, they heard the military music, but they were never allowed to go in there.
- [02:01]
Scott Gurion
JOHN Ben Carlson was in his early 20s when he moved to Copenhagen from his conservative home in the Danish countryside. And he says the symbolism of a military base in the heart of the country's capital was not lost on him and his friends.
- [02:15]
Roman Mars
That's reporter Scott Gurion.
- [02:17]
Scott Gurion
The base's walls represented authority, repression, pretty much everything. Denmark's younger generation had come to Copenhagen to escape. But in 1971, the Danish defense Ministry decided they no longer needed the base, and they closed it for good.
- [02:32]
John Ben Carlson
So suddenly one morning, we see all the soldiers marching out of there, you know, see all the vehicles leave, the military vehicles leave and they don't close the door.
- [02:42]
Roman Mars
John Speaking figuratively, technically, the doors were locked, but people living nearby realized they could break in and no one would stop them.
- [02:52]
John Ben Carlson
Somehow, the army, the big, big father figure, had kind of died in our middle, in the middle of the city, right? And we could just crawl over the walls and like two weeks before, we would have been shot if we did the same thing.
- [03:07]
Scott Gurion
Like any young person who comes across an abandoned boarded up property, John was curious to explore. The first evening he climbed over the barbed wire walls. The interior of the base was dark. He couldn't see much other than the broken glass from kids who had already vandalized the former barra. But as the sun rose, it became clear to John just what he and the other trespassers had on their hands.
- [03:30]
Roman Mars
This was not some cramped, depressing concrete jungle. Instead, the world within the fortress's walls was almost rural. At 85 acres, the base contained vast green spaceshills, patches of forest. There was even a lake with the hulking shapes of empty stables and ammunition depots scattered in charming arrangements around the landscape. And the trespassers wasted no time making themselves at home.
- [03:56]
John Ben Carlson
And whatever we wanted to do, we were free to do it. We could snap up whatever house, if we wanted 2,000 square meters to live on, we could do that. And where I finally ended up was a beautiful, beautiful old farm, you know, wonderful reflection of beautiful trees, you know, around the lake. And the only thing that reminded you of the city was you could hear the police sirens. But visually, it was like paradise.
- [04:21]
Scott Gurion
Somehow, John and the other trespassers ended up squatting in various buildings throughout the base. And as word spread, the abandoned compound quickly became a haven for the unwanted, the abused, and the dispossessed.
- [04:36]
John Ben Carlson
A lot of the kids that came there were from very poor backgrounds, you know, runaways from being mistreated sexually, or people who came out of jail and had nowhere to go, People who otherwise would be put into institution. So suddenly, this corpse of a military army base was beginning to get a lot to resurrect. But resurrect as something which was in total disaccord with what it originally was meant to be.
- [05:06]
Roman Mars
And it was during their first few weeks that the ragtag group of squatters decided to get organized. They declared the base a, quote, politically autonomous anarchist zone, or in plainer English, a commune. Only this commune would become far larger and more consequential than anyone outside could have imagined.
- [05:28]
Scott Gurion
Like many other communes, the founders wanted the new world they made within the walls to be as free as possible from all the old world's rules and customs and hierarchies.
- [05:37]
John Ben Carlson
We suddenly had a chance to kind of say, okay, we don't know what happens. We don't know anything. We have to create our own society. And it was a little like a beautiful blank piece of paper and you could start writing a new story, right?
- [05:53]
Scott Gurion
They drew up a mission statement according to which the goal of the commune was, quote, to create a self governing society whereby each and every individual holds themselves responsible for the well being of the entire community.
- [06:06]
Roman Mars
They also settled on a name. Taking a cue from the surrounding Christian's harbor neighborhood, they called their community Christiania.
- [06:14]
Scott Gurion
But unlike a lot of other idealistic communities of the 60s and 70s, Christiania is still around. And in many ways it has achieved the dreams of its founders. Today it's one of the longest lasting and most celebrated communes in the world and a magnet for people searching for alternative ways of living, existing both side by side and within a major European city.
- [06:37]
Roman Mars
But in recent years, Christiania's residents have faced an increasing number of threats that have raised tough questions about the limits of autonomy, about how much individual freedom might be too much, and whether to hold onto tradition or change with a changing world.
- [06:54]
Scott Gurion
And now people both inside and outside Christiania's walls are wondering how much longer this utopian experiment can ultimately last.
- [07:07]
Ole Luke Anderson
Christianity, of course, people moved in to find a place to live, but people very definitely moved into Christianity to be part of making a city that was based on other ideas than the rest of society.
- [07:21]
Scott Gurion
This is Ole Luke Anderson, another early Christiania resident. Olle arrived in the late 1970s, and he described to me what the scene was like after John and the other squatters settled in.
- [07:33]
Ole Luke Anderson
Christiania was tough to move into. Two thirds of Christiania had no infrastructure at all.
- [07:39]
Roman Mars
In other words, they might have had all those big old buildings and the basic shelter they needed, but very little else.
- [07:46]
Ole Luke Anderson
You had to make heating system yourself. You have to work with the sewage and electricity and water supply. So it was like moving into the Wild west in the 1970s.
- [07:59]
Roman Mars
And so the commune's residents got to work. They adapted the existing structures, building fantastical homes out of recycled objects and filling them with amazing art. They turned a former stable into a church and transformed a military horse riding arena into a concert hall. This is Christiania, a community of a thousand hippies and assorted dogs. There are small businesses, a factory that makes customized bicycles, a women's blacksmith shop.
- [08:28]
Scott Gurion
Completely surrounded by Copenhagen's old city, Christiania wasn't totally cut off from the outside world. Its residents would engage in commerce and come and go into the rest of the city. But inside the walls, the community collected its own trash and recycling, operated its own kindergarten, and even had its own newspaper and Marching bands. Aside from a small shared maintenance fee, residents paid no rent. No one owned their home, and when they moved out, there was nothing to sell. There were no building or zoning codes. There were also no laws. The only rules were no private ownership of land or housing, no weapons or violence, and no vehicles.
- [09:08]
Roman Mars
Otherwise, people in Christiania were pretty much free to do whatever they wanted. Play rock music in the streets, do drugs, sell drugs, wear their hair long or shave it off, love members of the same sex or a different race, all the things, in other words, that were still dangerous or impossible in the world outside its gates.
- [09:26]
Scott Gurion
John told me about a woman who spent her days roller skating around naked. And even a guy who kept a pet bear that he fed beer.
- [09:34]
John Ben Carlson
It always looked slightly drunk. It was big. It was rather big.
- [09:38]
Scott Gurion
How did he end up with a bear?
- [09:40]
John Ben Carlson
I have no idea. I don't know that. I don't know that.
- [09:44]
Scott Gurion
But amid the craziness, there were also moments of incredible beauty, like this story John told me from his first winter at the base about a former ammunition depot. Someone had turned into a house.
- [09:55]
John Ben Carlson
And suddenly one day when I passed it, you heard the most beautiful piano playing Chopin. And then you went into this building, and in this huge room, there was this little tent. And inside the tent, you can see kind of the silhouette of a grand piano. And I looked in, and here was this kind of very refined, artistic guy sitting and playing beautifully on the piano. You never. You never forget that stuff, right?
- [10:20]
Roman Mars
The individual freedom on offer in Christiania attracted people from around the world. But there were other advantages too, like how it had its own way of settling disputes and making collective decisions.
- [10:32]
Mario Sirozco
Well, what appealed about it to me would be like, every opinion gets heard and respected a lot.
- [10:40]
Scott Gurion
Mario Sirozco moved to Christiania from Boston in the early 1980s, a little after John and Ollie. And he says one of the big things he appreciated about the community was its particular decision making process.
- [10:52]
Roman Mars
By that point, the commune had roughly a thousand residents. Large for a commune, but small for a democracy. And they took advantage of their size by adopting what's called a consensus system.
- [11:04]
Mario Sirozco
We try to reach an agreement that everybody's satisfied with, which means if we're 100 people and 10 of those hundred people disagree, then we cannot pass this agreement.
- [11:18]
Scott Gurion
Well, but I'm just wondering, like, you've got a community of 800 or so people who, you know, might have very strong opinions about how the world should work, how the community should be run. It seems like it would be next to impossible to get every single person to agree on anything. So how does that. So how does that work? What do you do?
- [11:35]
Mario Sirozco
Oh, it worked in the sense that. Well, look. Okay, let's have another meeting.
- [11:44]
Roman Mars
Of course, you might be wondering what the Danish authorities thought of this 85 acre commune squatting on state property in the middle of the nation's capital. On several occasions in the decade following its founding, the Copenhagen police tried to remove the squatters, only to be met with. With determined resistance. Christiania is ready to fight to keep police out and if necessary, to fight for survival. The barricades are made of old furniture, even a boat. The weapons are eggs. But the authorities are only too aware that any attempt to get rid of Christiania could turn Copenhagen into another of Europe's squatter battlegrounds.
- [12:23]
Scott Gurion
So the Danish government changed course and decided to tolerate Christiania. The assumption was that the squatters would eventually lose interest and leave. But by the time the authorities realized that wasn't going to happen, it was too late. The area was too large and there were too many people. So the prospect of clearing them out became both untenable and eventually undesirable.
- [12:45]
Roman Mars
Outside the gates. The initial perception that this was just a group of lazy, pot smoking hippies was changing. Especially after favorable coverage on Danish television depicted what day to day life was actually like in the commune. Hundreds of thousands of tourists began flocking every year to the anarchist parkland in the center of the Danish capital. Its musical venues started hosting concerts featuring artists from Bob Dylan to Metallica.
- [13:09]
Scott Gurion
Despite everything that made it so different from the rest of Denmark, Christiania became a fact of life. And by the mid-1980s, an iconic part of Copenhagen in Denmark today, more than a thousand hippies and their sheep, goats.
- [13:22]
John Ben Carlson
And dogs celebrated the 10th anniversary of their very own city.
- [13:26]
Roman Mars
The anarchist commune of Christiania had achieved every corporate executive's dream. It was too big to fail.
- [13:34]
Scott Gurion
But despite their successes, residents knew their legal status. Occupying this land continued to be tenuous.
- [13:41]
Roman Mars
Christiania still belongs to the Danish Defense Ministry. At any time legally, Christiania could be cleared of squatters.
- [13:49]
John Ben Carlson
So we always had this fear about suddenly the big father waking up, you know, and seeing, oh, what the goes on over there, you know, they totally disobey all the orders, you know, let's go and clean up the place. But they knew that it was a valve for the society and they knew that it's very hard to kill a fairy tale. So they never came, right? They never came.
- [14:13]
Roman Mars
Except that slowly, over time, the outside world did come for Christiania. Just not in the way John or any of the early residents expected.
- [14:24]
Scott Gurion
Starting in the mid-2000s, a cascade of problems forced Christiania's residents to rethink some of their most cherished freedoms and depend more and more on help from the rest of Danish society. And many worried the changes were making their countercultural haven more like the rest of Denmark in the process.
- [14:43]
John Ben Carlson
But what you know, of course, happened was that this drug thing crept in more and more, and it had a gigantic impact on Christianity.
- [14:51]
Scott Gurion
The drug market in Christiania is known as Pusher street, and it's often considered where the commune's problems began.
- [14:58]
Roman Mars
Christiania was the only place in Denmark where the government turned a blind eye to drug use, and the commune initially allowed any type of drug to be used and sold openly. Then, after several residents died from heroin overdoses in the late 1970s, the community decided to outlaw hard drugs, but continued to allow cannabis.
- [15:20]
Scott Gurion
Ole and other residents refer to this as the junk blockade. It's a period he sees as a kind of golden era in which Pusher street was almost entirely controlled by locals who lived in Christiania, almost like a daily farmer's market, only for weed.
- [15:36]
Ole Luke Anderson
Idealistic people wanting to get the good weed and the good hash and sell it at a fair price and so on. So after the junk blockade, we had sort of created the perfect house market.
- [15:49]
Mario Sirozco
When I got here, it was. It was amazing.
- [15:53]
Scott Gurion
Mario Sirazzko sold drugs on Pusher street in the 80s after the junk blockade went into effect. And he paints a similar picture as Pusher Street.
- [16:03]
Mario Sirozco
We were. We were a family almost. There was this safety net, you know, it was a really civilized place.
- [16:11]
Roman Mars
At the time, dealers like Marios thought their biggest problem was the cops. The Copenhagen police, resentful of Christiania's drug culture, often violated the government's unofficial understanding with the commune. They conducted targeted raids on Pusher street and then slapped local dealers with light sentences, a mostly symbolic show of force that didn't actually disrupt business.
- [16:35]
Mario Sirozco
Dude, when we sold hash in the beginning, we stood there all day, made less than a taxi driver and risked going to jail. But it was only small sentences. I've been to jail 20 days, 40 days, 60 days. It was okay, you know, it was fair enough.
- [16:50]
Roman Mars
But eventually it became clear that the cops were the least of Christiania's problems. Far worse were the gangs.
- [16:58]
Scott Gurion
Since cannabis was prohibited in Denmark, the supply had to come from abroad, which often meant dealing with international criminal organizations up the chain, like the Hells Angels, who were importing from places like Afghanistan and Morocco. As a result, various gangs had an on and off presence on Pusher street starting in the 1980s.
- [17:18]
Roman Mars
Then around 2004, a new conservative government increased the penalties for cannabis dealers. The stiffer sentencing scared most of the locals away from Pusher Street. It also drove prices up. And into that lucrative vacuum, the gangs swept in to take control.
- [17:35]
Mario Sirozco
So all of a sudden you have all these different groups that didn't really have any power before, but the hash market, they realized, wow, there's a lot of money in this. And so all of a sudden these gangs that were always there with knives and, you know, all of a sudden they had guns.
- [17:52]
Scott Gurion
And there was almost nothing the residents of Christiania could do about it. After all, they were just a bunch of peace loving hippies. They never really stood a chance fighting organized crime. And it wasn't long before the gangs began fighting each other for control over Pusher Street.
- [18:06]
Ole Luke Anderson
The problem is whenever there's trouble between two gangs, and they're often a trouble between the gangs, Pusher street is a place where they can choose to make the killings.
- [18:19]
Roman Mars
And Olle is not exaggerating. In the past decade, Pusher street has become a notorious hotspot for gang violence, including beatings, stabbings, masked gunmen opening fire in public and a string of shooting deaths.
- [18:33]
Ole Luke Anderson
It comes two days after a shooting.
- [18:36]
Roman Mars
In which two police officers and a civilian were injured during an attempt to arrest a drug dealer in the Danish capital. One policeman is still in a serious condition.
- [18:49]
Scott Gurion
If you're able to generalize, describe kind of the mood in the community now. Like what are people saying? How are they feeling?
- [19:00]
Ole Luke Anderson
I don't know, feeling that we are in some sort of limbo now. We are just waiting for maybe the next murder. Whatever. Things are still out of control.
- [19:18]
Roman Mars
When we come back, what the residents of the commune ultimately decided to do about Pusher street and the ripple effects that that decision has had on the rest of Christiania. Have you ever felt a sense of unease when you leave your home wondering if everything will be safe while you're away? Did you leave the burner on? Did you remember to lock the door? These are the thoughts that invade my mind when I leave the house. And one way I have found to put those worries away and not think about them anymore is SimpliSafe. With Fast Protect Monitoring and LiveGuard Protection, SimpliSafe agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm and can even see and spe speak to intruders to stop them in their tracks. You'll never be locked into a long term contract, so you can cancel any time. Pricing is transparent and affordable at less than $1 a day with no hidden fees ever. It's easy to install and activate your SimpliSafe system in less than an hour. It's really well designed. I cannot stress this enough, or you can choose professional installation to have a pro do it for you. Protect your home with 50% off a new SimpliSafe system plus a free indoor security camera when you sign up. For fast protect monitoring, visit simplisafe.com invisible that's simplisafe.com invisible there's no safe like SimpliSafe. Anthropic's Claude family of models is AI backed by uncompromising integrity. Claude is run by responsible leadership who have an ethical approach to the development of AI while providing strong data security and putting humanity first. Whether you're brainstorming alone or building with a team, Claude can help. Many companies already build with Claude, so why not work with Claude to help you do your best work, too? Claude can perform complex cognitive tasks transcending simple pattern recognition or text generation. Use Claude to transcribe and analyze almost any static image, translate between various languages in real time, or practice grammar through Claude's multilingual processing capabilities. Claude can handle cogeneration too. Want to take Claude with you? The Claude app is available on Apple and Android app stores. Discover how Claude can transform your work and business@anthropic.com Claude that's anthropic a N-T-H-R-O-P-I-C.com Claude C L A U D E Do you like podcasts, music, and audiobooks? Because when you subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, you get all three in one app. Imagine listening to your favorite podcast and music on the Go to work, school, the gym, or better yet, vacation. Now imagine being on vacation with your favorite audiobook from Audible, and then listening to a new one every month from a huge selection of popular titles. That sounds like a pretty good vacation, right? Audible is now included on Amazon Music Unlimited. Download the Amazon Music app now to start listening terms apply what does it mean to be rich? Maybe it's less about reaching a magic number and more about discovering the magic in life. At Edward Jones, our dedicated financial advisors are the people you can count on for financial strategies that help support a life you love. Because the key to being rich is knowing what counts. Learn more about our comprehensive approach to planning@edwardjones. Edward Jones Member, SIPC we're back with reporter Scott Gurion.
- [22:57]
Scott Gurion
A while back, I visited Christiania to learn more about the fallout from the Drug trade. The first time I went there, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I walked through this narrow brick archway into the community, and it immediately felt different from almost everywhere else in Copenhagen. There were no cars, few paved roads, and most of the buildings were covered with spray paint, along with political graffiti that said things like, Delete your local fascist. It was also clear I hadn't fully comprehended just how big this place was. In addition to the forests and open green space, there were these giant hills around the edges of the community. They were the remains of the old fortress's original ramparts. Someone even had horses, despite this being in the middle of a metropolis. Eventually, I made my way to Pusher Street. The street consisted of a long alleyway that led to a central plaza, and it was lined with these plywood stalls selling cannabis totally out in the open. They were spray painted with the names of each of the businesses, like Candy Shop and Purple Gorilla. It was brimming with customers who seemed to come from all walks of life. But despite the bustle of commerce, it was clear the farmers market atmosphere described by Ole and Marios, that place where you could leisurely check out what was on offer and have friendly chat with the dealers, was long gone. All of the dealers now were outsiders who didn't really have much of a connection to Christiania. Around the time of my visit, the police had increased their crackdowns, deploying undercover cops and showing up several times a day to arrest people. As a result, all the sellers were acting skittish, including when I tried sprinkling in some casual questions, something at which I more or less totally failed. What kind of cookies are they?
- [24:56]
John Ben Carlson
I have vanilla cookies.
- [24:58]
Scott Gurion
You make them yourself?
- [24:59]
John Ben Carlson
No, there's a lady that comes by.
- [25:01]
Mario Sirozco
Hello? Too much question. Without buying, without selling.
- [25:05]
Scott Gurion
No, I mean, I want to know what I'm getting.
- [25:07]
Mario Sirozco
Okay, okay. I'm just asking. Okay. I'm sorry.
- [25:12]
Scott Gurion
I'm sorry.
- [25:12]
Mario Sirozco
I'm sorry.
- [25:13]
Scott Gurion
There had been several signs at the entrance to the street warning people not to take photos. But there was this one tourist who either didn't see the signs or chose to ignore them, and he took a picture anyway. Immediately, some guy who was working for the gangs as a lookout person approached him and made him delete it off his phone. Don't you understand? He said. We're criminals. Ultimately, the whole scene felt antithetical to the spirit in which Christiania was founded.
- [25:41]
Roman Mars
Many Christiania residents, including Marios and Ole, have always fervently believed that the best way to fix the problems on Pusher street would be to legalize cannabis in Denmark. Legalization would take power away from the gangs. But so far that's something Denmark's federal government has been unwilling to do.
- [26:00]
Scott Gurion
So Ole and several others decided they had no choice but to change one of the fundamental things that made Christiania different in the first place. In the absence of legalization, they wanted to ban all drug sales in the community.
- [26:13]
Ole Luke Anderson
The last three years we have had three killings in Poosa Street. So we got fed up. We couldn't talk to the people. We didn't know the people. We knew that you had all these gangs like Hell Sandals running the show, making the money. So there was nothing in it anymore for Christiania or for anybody in Christiania. So we don't want it anymore.
- [26:39]
Roman Mars
And in the summer of 2023, before the consensus process could even come to a decision, a group of residents who were fed up with Pusher street decided to take matters into their own hands.
- [26:50]
Scott Gurion
In the early morning of August 8th, a bunch of residents of Christiania went out and blocked off Pusher Street.
- [26:57]
Ole Luke Anderson
Yeah, I was part of that.
- [26:58]
Roman Mars
You were?
- [26:59]
Scott Gurion
Why did you do that?
- [27:01]
Ole Luke Anderson
To show that we don't want it. Actually to block it, if we could.
- [27:06]
Scott Gurion
What was that like?
- [27:07]
Ole Luke Anderson
It was such relief.
- [27:11]
Scott Gurion
Ole described to me how they used heavy machinery to barricade the entrances with shipping containers and concrete blocks on either side of the street, making it impossible for people to enter.
- [27:22]
Ole Luke Anderson
And then sort of, we left it. The pushers came back 8:00 in the morning and they were angry. And they were very angry. And like 10 o'clock they actually managed to find a way to the containers. So at 12 o'clock everything was open again.
- [27:44]
Scott Gurion
Were you expecting that the blockade would last longer?
- [27:48]
Ole Luke Anderson
I expected it to last a little longer, yes. Yes. But I didn't expect it to really last, no. Because if they had not managed to move the containers and reopen Push the Street, you would have had a lot of trouble. They would have sought revenge.
- [28:09]
Roman Mars
The reality is that the only action the unarmed people of Christiania could ever take against the gangs was purely symbolic. Not only had the action not been agreed on by the larger community in a consensus meeting, but the residents also knew that simply saying that they wanted to close Pusher street wouldn't make a difference. Faced with a ban, the dealers would just refuse to leave.
- [28:33]
Scott Gurion
Which is why some of the residents wanted to reverse another long standing tradition. If the community finally agreed to close Pusher street, they also wanted to issue a public statement saying that they were powerless to do it on their Own, essentially inviting the police to come in and enforce the closure for them.
- [28:50]
Roman Mars
The irony of which was not lost on anyone. The commune's residents had spent their lives trying to live without the state and state violence as an organizing force. But now, if they wanted to finally kick the gangs out, the anarchists of Christiania would have to ask the state for help.
- [29:09]
Ole Luke Anderson
So somehow the police, they won. You have all the gangs, but police is certainly the strongest gang.
- [29:19]
Scott Gurion
Have things changed where the community's had, like, recent conversations with the police and with the city, where you feel like you can trust them now more than in the past?
- [29:26]
Ole Luke Anderson
No. We have talks, but, you know, personally, I don't trust them. No.
- [29:34]
Scott Gurion
So how does the community then feel about issuing this statement saying, we're, you know, we're like, inviting the police to help us out?
- [29:40]
Ole Luke Anderson
Yeah, that was a really strange feeling.
- [29:46]
Scott Gurion
After the latest spike in violence, and not long after the night of the barricades, hundreds of Christianites came to a hastily called meeting in the Gray hall, this large concert venue they often use for important gatherings.
- [30:00]
Ole Luke Anderson
And then we had half an hour that was very special, where people just came up to the microphone that didn't make any speeches. They just said, like, I want to close Booster Street. I want to close Porchester Street. And that was somehow so convincing to the minority who didn't want that. So that was the end of the meeting.
- [30:22]
Roman Mars
To hear Ole tell it, the consensus process did what it was supposed to do. It created consensus. But some residents paint a different picture. They say the consensus system is just the next tradition of Christiania's that has begun to fall apart.
- [30:38]
Mario Sirozco
Christiania is not in agreement about this at all.
- [30:43]
Scott Gurion
Not long after the decision, I ran into Mario Serrazo outside an event on cannabis legalization, which, remember, was still his desired outcome. He told me that he thought closing the street wasn't the solution, and he said the decision was far from unanimous.
- [30:58]
Mario Sirozco
I don't want to push the street closed. It's a part of the freedom that appealed to me about Christiania. But there's a small group of people in Christiania. They're hijacking the meetings. I would say there's about 50 people out of the 900 people that we are out there doing this, and they're very active. They go to every meeting, and they just force their agenda through.
- [31:22]
Scott Gurion
So when you say this group of 50 people or whatever has kind of hijacked the process, is this kind of like a failure of the consensus process?
- [31:30]
Mario Sirozco
They have smashed the consensus process at the meeting. They actually got in A circle and went up to the microphone one by one. Yes, I want to close Pusher Street. Then the next one comes up, Yes, I want to close Pusher Street. And they just in a circle, a non stop circle. And every time anybody else tried to say something, they were booed at.
- [31:51]
Scott Gurion
Marios and Ole had different recollections about whether the majority of attendees were in favor of closing the street or keeping it open. But Ole did agree about one thing. When you say it was so convincing to them, they changed their mind in.
- [32:03]
Ole Luke Anderson
The end, do you mean they didn't change their mind, they just gave up.
- [32:07]
Scott Gurion
Okay, so is that. I mean, I'm not an expert on how consensus is supposed to work, but is that, I mean, like generally consensus? Is everyone supposed to agree or how does that.
- [32:18]
Ole Luke Anderson
Yeah, that's, you know, it's not really a fair system, you know.
- [32:23]
Roman Mars
And so on a Saturday morning last April, surrounded by media from around the world, residents of Christiania gathered for a ceremony where they dug up the cobblestones of street to evict the pushers once and for all. Christiania's marching band even showed up to participate in the festivities.
- [32:50]
Scott Gurion
Copenhagen's Lord Mayor Sophie Anderson, who grew up attending concerts in Christiania, was also there doing rounds of media interviews.
- [32:58]
Sophie Anderson
We cannot have a Christiania that is dying out because people don't dare to be here.
- [33:03]
Mario Sirozco
Push.
- [33:03]
Sophie Anderson
The street has to die in order for Christiania to live.
- [33:07]
Roman Mars
Are you going to take a cobblestone as a souvenir?
- [33:10]
Sophie Anderson
I am truly going to take a cobblestone as a souvenir and I'm going to place it next to the cobblestone from the Berlin Wall.
- [33:17]
Scott Gurion
Marius, for his part, was decidedly not celebrating. He said he found the festivities downright depressing.
- [33:25]
Mario Sirozco
It seems to me out of control. I don't know this sort of gray zone that we're in now politically, because before we said you to the state, we're doing things our way. But now we're in their pocket.
- [33:42]
Roman Mars
In their pocket. Because even as most of the recent attention has been focused on Pusher Street, Christiania has struck another deal with the government that could integrate the commune with the city even more. Not by kicking people out, but by bringing people from the outside in.
- [33:59]
Scott Gurion
Denmark is struggling with an affordable housing crisis. And from the government's perspective, Christiania's undeveloped land, so close to the center of the city, is ripe for development. But from Christiania's perspective, this new logic has rekindled the residents fears of being evicted from their homes, which, remember, they do not own.
- [34:20]
Roman Mars
So a few years ago, Christiania and the Danish government struck a bargain. The state will allow for the community to own its land outright by purchasing it far below market value. But in return, over the next few years, Christiania will have to build government subsidized low income apartments for 300 new.
- [34:41]
Scott Gurion
People, which you might think should solve the problem. Christiania has always branded itself as a place for the adrift and downtrodden, so how could it possibly say no to low income housing? But in reality, the deal remains highly controversial among the residents, proving that even.
- [34:57]
Roman Mars
Anarchists can go nimby.
- [35:00]
Scott Gurion
I know there's been a lot of opposition to the plan to build public housing, but I'm wondering if you've heard anyone express that the community should be welcoming to people living in public housing, because they seem to be exactly the type of people the community has always accepted in the past.
- [35:15]
Ole Luke Anderson
I don't have a problem with the people. I have a problem with the amount of people and I have a problem especially with the volume of new buildings. That's where I have my problem.
- [35:30]
Scott Gurion
Ollie Lug Anderson likens the plan to a Trojan horse that will ultimately destroy Christiania. The government's plan will increase the population by a third and radically alter the geography of the area. The way he puts it, the housing plan would be the equivalent of plopping down a thousand shipping containers in the middle of the community. Plus, he can't imagine how the commune will be able to work within the government's public housing bureaucracy.
- [35:55]
Ole Luke Anderson
It will be very hard to combine the way we do stuff in Christiania with the way people do it in social housing projects. It will not really be part of the rest of Christiania. We'll get like two Christianias on this issue.
- [36:11]
Scott Gurion
Marios agrees with Ollie. He sees both the closing of Pusher street and the building of the affordable housing as part of the same worrying trend toward normalcy and even gentrification that Christiania's new residence will water down. Precisely what drew him to the community in the first place.
- [36:29]
Mario Sirozco
300 more boring people in here or 300 more families in here not really interested in Christianity. They just want to the location. And as soon as all these people move in, they're going to start complaining about the noise. Oh, the music is too loud and then your lawn is a bit too dirty and you know, just more and more control is going to come and we're going to end up like everywhere else.
- [36:51]
Roman Mars
For Marios, the community's counterculture, just like its consensus process and its tolerance towards cannabis, is one of the pillars of Christiania, and he thinks it is the next to crumble.
- [37:04]
Mario Sirozco
I don't know, you know, I'm going to continue. I'm going to continue painting and selling my art. But it'll feel maybe ironic to be a rebel in the middle of something that is totally commercial. If they start having bar, you know, sort of fancy wine bars and souvenir shops, then I will start thinking where to go to find freedom again.
- [37:31]
Roman Mars
But some residents are cautiously optimistic that there might actually be a way to make this work without sacrificing everything that's special about Christiania.
- [37:43]
Sophie Anderson
So in this area we have pointed out that we could place two buildings.
- [37:50]
Scott Gurion
Metta Prague has lived in Christiania for nearly 40 years, and toward the end of my visit, she gave me a tour of some of the proposed sites for the new housing.
- [38:00]
Sophie Anderson
At the moment it's open space where we have storage for woods and some very beautiful trees. On the other side they have a nice garden for this huge building. Over there they have a public garden.
- [38:14]
Scott Gurion
So this would. A lot of this would be demolished to make way for the housing. Mette has a background in architecture and urban renewal, and lately she's been using her experience to help the community negotiate the terms of its housing agreement with the Danish government. One of the challenges, Meta explains, is that for a long time now, Christiania has had a specific process to carefully vet new people before they move into the neighborhood.
- [38:40]
Sophie Anderson
Nowadays, when we have an empty house and invite people to apply for it, we are free to choose who will come and live here. To choose outcasts, spacey thinking people who will fit to the house best.
- [38:59]
Roman Mars
For example, what could this person give back to the community? Are they a good carpenter? Are they a skilled gardener who will take care of the neighborhood's green spaces? Maybe they're good at planning meetings and events. With people applying for public housing, those factors would no longer matter.
- [39:15]
Scott Gurion
Still, Mehta says there are creative loopholes the community can use to navigate this new bureaucratic system. And she's ready to deal with the challenge head on.
- [39:25]
Sophie Anderson
I think you just have to face it that Christiania will change, build new inhabitants. And the question is, do Christiania need new inhabitants or can we go on like we are today? And basically, I think that in all communities you need to always be developing, so you always have to be in a kind of dialogue with the outside, inside, outside, inside, because otherwise you will slowly die.
- [39:59]
Scott Gurion
Despite some of the opposition to the new housing, this was another sentiment I heard a lot that change itself isn't inherently Something to be afraid of.
- [40:09]
John Ben Carlson
Christiania cannot end up as a Hebrew museum kind of right.
- [40:13]
Roman Mars
John Bank Carlson no longer lives in Christiania, but he agrees with Metaprog. He believes that the only real mistake is not changing if the buildings where.
- [40:24]
John Ben Carlson
Ordinary people can come in. Old people, young people, lonely mothers. I think that Christianity should trust in the strengths of its own spirit to a degree that they're not afraid of being wiped out by by incoming people. It should develop with the surrounding society.
- [40:40]
Scott Gurion
The truth is, for all of Christiania's efforts to exist separate and apart from the world, this place has never really been able to be as completely independent as its founders had envisioned all those years ago. I ran this by John and Olay and they were quick to agree.
- [40:55]
John Ben Carlson
Of course it has been a grand illusion to think that Christianity at any point was separated from Christiania.
- [41:03]
Ole Luke Anderson
Is very much a normal part of Denmark. It still a bit different as a neighborhood, but it's part of the rest.
- [41:11]
Roman Mars
Christiania will even have to take out a bank loan to buy the land and build the new housing. They'll make their money back by charging the new tenants rent. Things like interest rates, inflation and the real estate market. These things now matter just as much within the walls of Christiania as anywhere else in the eu.
- [41:30]
Scott Gurion
In the end, it's clear that the world's problems have also become Christiania's problems. But John says that even if the community can't totally escape from all the different pressures, that doesn't make it any less of an achievement. So if Christianity were to close tomorrow, would you look back at it and think it's been a success?
- [41:49]
John Ben Carlson
Certainly. I certainly would. I certainly would. I think Christianity's impact, apart from being a beautiful urban flower that you are entertained by and like the smell of, it's that all of us have the power, if we are courageous enough to create our own surroundings, that we can decide our own way of living. You know, we can actually kick down the walls to get out in the open air and at least try to do it right.
- [42:28]
Roman Mars
99% of visible was reported this week by Scott Gurion. Edited by Joe Rosenberg with additional reporting by Kim Hansen, Naomi Fowler and Polly Beau Mixed by Hazik Bin Ahmad Fareed Music by Swan Real fact checking by Sona Avakian. If you want to learn more about Christiania and hear other fascinating stories from around the world, be sure to check out Scott's own podcast, Far From Home. Scott has been reporting for decades from places like Iran and Mongolia and Chernobyl, and he puts all that experience into his show Far From Home is about to launch its fourth season, and I can't recommend it enough. Go subscribe now. Special thanks this week to Ula Mortensen and to criminologist David Sostel at the University of Lund in Sweden, who was a huge help with the story, but whose voice we didn't to include. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney hall is our senior editor. Taylor Shedrick is our intern. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Leshma, Dawn Gabriella Gladney, Kelly Prime, Jacob Maldonado Medina, Nina Patok and me, Roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of The Stitcher and SiriusXM Pop Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California, home of the Oakland Roots Soccer Club, of which I'm a proud community owner. Other teens may come and go, but the Roots are Oakland first. Always. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our new Discord server where we talk about the power broker, we talk about episodes, we talk about architecture, we talk about Flagstaff, about all kinds of things. There's a link to that Discord server as well as every past episode of 99pi@99pi.org Robert Half research indicates 9 out of 10 hiring managers are having difficulty hiring. If you have open roles, chances are you're feeling this too. That's why you need Robert Half. Their specialized recruiting professionals engage their skills with their award winning AI to connect businesses of all sizes with highly skilled talent in finance and accounting, technology, marketing and creative, legal and administrative and customer support at Robert Half. They Know talent. Visit robert half.com today. Do you ever watch TV and think, wow, I'm really good at this? You're right. With rewards on sling, watching 30 minutes of TV daily gives you chances to win up to $10,000 in cash and other monthly prizes. Sign up for Sling or Stream for free with Sling Free Stream to get rewarded for watching TV. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com to learn more and get started. No purchase necessary for it. We're prohibited by law. Visit sling.com for more details. Hello beautiful nerds, It's Roman here. If you're loving 99% invisible and want to hear new episodes, ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content like AMAs with me and producers on staff, subscribe to Siri Podcast plus on Apple Podcasts to start your free trial today.