Christiania

ROMAN MARS: 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 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.

JON BANG CARLSEN: 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.

SCOTT GURIAN: Jon Bang Carlsen was in his early 20s when he moved to Copenhagen from his conservative home in the Danish countryside. And he says that the symbolism of a military base in the heart of the country’s capital was not lost on him and his friends.

ROMAN MARS: That’s reporter Scott Gurian.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

JON BANG CARLSEN: So, suddenly one morning, we see all the soldiers marching out of there–see all the military vehicles leave. And they don’t close the door.

ROMAN MARS: Jon’s speaking figuratively. Technically, the doors were locked. But people living nearby realized they could break in and no one would stop them.

JON BANG CARLSEN: Somehow the army–the big, big father figure–had kind of died in the middle of the city. And we could just crawl over the walls. And two weeks before, we would have been shot if we did the same thing.

SCOTT GURIAN: Like any young person who comes across an abandoned, boarded-up property, Jon 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 barracks. But as the sun rose, it became clear to John just what he and the other trespassers had on their hands.

ROMAN MARS: This was not some cramped, depressing concrete jungle. Instead, the world within the fortress’ walls was almost rural. At 85 acres, the base contained vast green spaces, hills, and 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.

JON BANG CARLSEN: 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–wonderful reflection of beautiful trees 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 somehow.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

JON BANG CARLSEN: A lot of the kids that came there were from very poor backgrounds–you know–runaways from being mistreated sexually, people who came out of jail and had nowhere to go, and people who otherwise would be put into an institution. So suddenly this corpse of a military army base was beginning to resurrect but resurrect as something which was in total discord with what it originally was meant to be.

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 “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.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

JON BANG CARLSEN: 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 that you could start writing a new story with.

SCOTT GURIAN: They drew up a mission statement according to which the goal of the commune was “to create a self-governing society whereby each and every individual holds themselves responsible for the wellbeing of the entire community.”

ROMAN MARS: They also settled on a name, taking a cue from the surrounding Christian’s Harbor neighborhood. They called their community “Christiania.”

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

ROMAN MARS: But in recent years, Christiana’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.

SCOTT GURIAN: And now people both inside and outside Christiania’s walls are wondering how much longer this utopian experiment can ultimately last.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: Christiania–of course–people moved in to find a place to live. but people very definitely moved into Christiania to be part of making a city that was based on other ideas than the rest of society.

SCOTT GURIAN: This is Ole Lykke Andersen, another early Christiana resident. Ole arrived in the late 1970s, and he described to me what the scene was like after Jon and the other squatters settled in.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: Christiana was tough to move into. Two thirds of Christiania had no infrastructure at all.

ROMAN MARS: In other words, they might’ve had all those big old buildings and the basic shelter they needed but very little else.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: You had to make a heating system yourself. You had to work with the sewage and electricity and water supply. So, it was like moving into the wild west in the 1970s.

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.

MARTHA TEICHNER (CBS NEWS): 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 completely surrounded by Copenhagen’s old city…

SCOTT GURIAN: 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 band. 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, land, or housing, no weapons or violence, and no vehicles.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: Jon 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.

JON BANG CARLSEN: It always looked slightly drunk. It was big. It was rather big.

SCOTT GURIAN: How did he end up with a bear?

JON BANG CARLSEN: I have no idea. I don’t know that. I don’t know that.

SCOTT GURIAN: But amid the craziness, there were also moments of incredible beauty, like the story Jon told me from his first winter at the base about a former ammunition depot that someone had turned into a house.

JON BANG CARLSEN: And suddenly one day when I passed it, you heard the most beautiful piano kind of 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 forget that stuff, right?

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.

MARIOS OROZCO: Well, what appealed about it to me would be, like, every opinion gets heard and respected a lot.

SCOTT GURIAN: Marios Orozco moved to Christiania from Boston in the early 1980s–a little after John and Ole. And he says one of the big things he appreciated about the community was its particular decision-making process.

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.”

MARIOS OROZCO: We tried to reach an agreement that everybody’s satisfied with, which means if we were a hundred people and ten of those hundred people disagree, then we cannot pass this agreement.

SCOTT GURIAN: I’m just wondering, like, you’ve got a community of 800 or so people who 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 work? What do you do?

MARIOS OROZCO: Oh, it worked in the sense that… “Well, look, okay… Let’s have another meeting.”

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 determined resistance.

MARTHA TEICHNER (CBS NEWS): 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…

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

CBS NEWS: In Denmark today, more than a thousand hippies and their sheep, goats, and dogs celebrated the 10th anniversary of their very own city…

ROMAN MARS: The anarchist commune of Christiania had achieved every corporate executive’s dream. It was too big to fail.

SCOTT GURIAN: But despite their successes, residents knew their legal status occupying this land continued to be tenuous.

MARTHA TEICHNER (CBS NEWS): Christiana still belongs to the Danish defense ministry. At any time, legally, Christiania could be cleared of squatters.

JON BANG CARLSEN: So, we always had this fear about suddenly the big father waking up and seeing, “Oh, what the f*** goes on over there? They totally disobey all the orders. 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 fairytale. So they never came, right? They never came.

ROMAN MARS: Except that slowly over time, the outside world did come for Christiania–just not in the way Jon or any of the early residents expected.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

JON BANG CARLSEN: Well, what of course happened was that this drugs thing crept in more and more. And it had a gigantic impact on Christiania.

SCOTT GURIAN: The drug market in Christiania is known as Pusher Street, and it’s often considered where the commune’s problems began.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: 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 hash market.

MARIOS OROZCO: When I got here, it was amazing.

SCOTT GURIAN: Marios Orozco sold drugs on Pusher Street in the ’80s after the junk blockade went into effect. And he paints a similar picture.

MARIOS OROZCO: As Pusher Street, we were a family almost. It was the safety net. It was a really civilized place.

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.

MARIOS OROZCO: 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. It was fair enough.

ROMAN MARS: But eventually it became clear that the cops were the least of Christiania’s problems. Far worse were the gangs.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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 Hell’s 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.

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.

MARIOS OROZCO: 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 s***.”And so, all of a sudden, these gangs that were always there with knives and… All of a sudden, they had guns.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: The problem is whenever there’s trouble between two gangs–and there often is trouble between the gangs–Pusher Street is a place where they can choose to make the killings.

ROMAN MARS: And Ole is not exaggerating. In the past decade, Pusher Street has become a notorious hotspot for gang violence, including beatings, stabbings, mass gunmen opening fire in public, and a string of shooting deaths.

PUSHER STREET NEWS REPORT: It comes two days after a shooting 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…

SCOTT GURIAN: If you’re able to generalize, describe the mood in the community now. What are people saying? How are they feeling?

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: 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.

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…

[AD BREAK]

ROMAN MARS: We’re back with reporter Scott Gurian.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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’ original ramparts. Someone even had horses despite this being in the middle of a metropolis. Eventually, I made my way to Pusher Street.

[Pusher Street bustle]

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

PUSHER STREET: Hash? Weed? / One gram… One and a half grams. / For 100 you get 1.5 / Buy a joint and you can be little bit happy. Can I see a smile? Can I please see a smile?

SCOTT GURIAN: But despite the bustle of commerce, it was clear the farmer’s market atmosphere described by all Ole and Marios–that place where you could leisurely check out what was on offer and have a 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.

SCOTT GURIAN: What kind of cookies are they?

PUSHER #1: I have vanilla cookies.

SCOTT GURIAN: You make them yourself?

PUSHER #1: No, there’s a lady that comes by and–

PUSHER #2: It’s too much. Too much question without buying–without selling.

SCOTT GURIAN: No, I mean, I want to know what I’m getting.

PUSHER #2: Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

SCOTT GURIAN: Okay. Okay. I’m just asking. Okay.

PUSHER #1: But just stay a little bit at the side.

SCOTT GURIAN: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: The last three years, we have had three killings in Pusher 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’s Angels, 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.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: In the early morning of August 8th, a bunch of residents of Christiania went out and blocked off Pusher Street.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: Yeah, I was part of that.

SCOTT GURIAN: You were?

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: Yeah.

SCOTT GURIAN: Why did you do that?

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: To show that we don’t want it… Actually to block it if we could…

SCOTT GURIAN: What was that like?

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: It was such a relief.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: And then sort of we left it, the pushers came back at 8:00 in the morning. And they were angry. And they were very angry. And, like, 10:00, they actually managed to find a way to move the containers. So, at 12:00, everything was open again.

SCOTT GURIAN: Were you expecting that the blockade would last longer?

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: 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 Pusher Street, you would’ve had a lot of trouble. They would have sought revenge.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

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.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: So, somehow the police… They won. You have all the gangs, but police is certainly the strongest gang.

SCOTT GURIAN: Have things changed where the community’s had recent conversations with the police and with the city where you feel like you can trust them now more than in the past?

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: No. We have talks, but personally I don’t trust them. No.

SCOTT GURIAN: So, how does the community then feel about issuing this statement saying, “We’re inviting the police to help us out”?

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: Yeah, that was a really strange feeling.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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 Grey Hall–this large concert venue they often use for important gatherings.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: And then we had a half an hour that was very special where people just came up to the microphone that didn’t make any speeches that just said, “I want to close Pusher Street. I want to close Pusher Street.” And that was somehow so convincing to the minority who didn’t want that. So, that was the end of the meeting.

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 that the consensus system is just the next tradition of Christiania’s that has begun to fall apart.

MARIOS OROZCO: Christiania is not in agreement about this at all.

SCOTT GURIAN: Not long after the decision, I ran into Marios Orozco 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.

MARIOS OROZCO: I don’t want Pusher Street closed. It’s a part of the freedom that appealed to me about Christiania. But there is 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.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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?

MARIOS OROZCO: 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’re just in a circle–a nonstop circle. And every time anybody else tried to say something, they were booed at.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

SCOTT GURIAN: When you say it was so convincing to them–they changed their mind in the end?

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: They didn’t change their mind. They just gave up.

SCOTT GURIAN: Okay. So, I mean, I’m not an expert on how consensus is supposed to work, but is… I mean, generally consensus– Is everyone supposed to agree? Or how does it–

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: Yeah, it’s not really a fair system. [laughs]

ROMAN MARS: And so, on a Saturday morning last April…

[cheers]

ROMAN MARS: Surrounded by media from around the world, residents of Christiania gathered for a ceremony where they dug up the cobblestones of Pusher Street to evict the pushers once and for all.

[marching band]

ROMAN MARS: Christiana’s marching band even showed up to participate in the festivities.

SCOTT GURIAN: Copenhagen’s Lord Mayor Sophie Andersen, who grew up attending concerts in Christiania, was also there doing rounds of media interviews.

SOPHIE ANDERSEN: We cannot have a Christiania that is dying out because people don’t dare to be here. Pusher Street has to die in order for Christiania to live.

PUSHER STREET NEWS REPORT: Are you going to take a cobblestone as a souvenir?

SOPHIE ANDERSEN: 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.

SCOTT GURIAN: Marios, for his part, was decidedly not celebrating. He said he found the festivities downright depressing.

MARIOS OROZCO: It seems to me out of control–this sort of gray zone that we’re in now politically–because before we said, “F*** you,” to this state, “we’re doing things our way.” But now we’re in their pocket.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

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 people.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

ROMAN MARS: Proving that even anarchists can go NIMBY.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: 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.

SCOTT GURIAN: Ole Lykke Andersen 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.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: It’ll be very hard to combine the way we do stuff in Christiania with the way people do it in social housing projects. It’ll not really be part of the rest of Christiania. We’ll get, like, two Christianias.

SCOTT GURIAN: On this issue, Marios agrees with Ole. 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 residents will water down precisely what drew him to the community in the first place.

MARIOS OROZCO: 300 more boring people in here or 300 more families in here, not really interested in Christiania. They just want 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 just more and more control is going to come. And we’re going to end up like everywhere else.

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.

MARIOS OROZCO: I don’t 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 fancy wine bars and souvenir shops, then I will start thinking where to go to find freedom again.

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.

[footsteps]

METTE PRAG: So, in this area, we have pointed out that we could place two buildings.

SCOTT GURIAN: Mette Prag 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.

METTE PRAG: At the moment, it’s an open space where we have storage for woods and some very beautiful trees. On the other side, they’ll have a nice garden for this huge building over there. They’ll have a public garden.

SCOTT GURIAN: So, 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, Mette 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.

METTE PRAG: 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 and spacey-thinking people who will fit to the house best.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: Still, Mette 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.

METTE PRAG: I think you just have to face it that Christinia will change with new inhabitants. And the question is, do Christinia 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.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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.

JON BANG CARLSEN: Christiania cannot end up as a hippie museum kind of, right?

ROMAN MARS: Jon Bang Carlsen no longer lives in Christiania, but he agrees with Mette Prag. He believes that the only real mistake is not changing.

JON BANG CARLSEN: If you build a building where ordinary people can come in–old people, young people, lonely mothers–I think that Christiania should trust in the strengths of its own spirit to a degree that they’re not afraid of being wiped out by incoming people. It should develop with the surrounding society.

SCOTT GURIAN: 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 Jon and Ole, and they were quick to agree.

JON BANG CARLSEN: Of course, it has been a grand illusion to think that Christiania at any point was separated from the world.

OLE LYKKE ANDERSEN: Christiania is very much a normal part of Denmark. It’s still a bit different as a neighborhood. But it’s part of the rest.

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.

SCOTT GURIAN: In the end, it’s clear that the world’s problems have also become Christiania’s problems. But Jon 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.

SCOTT GURIAN: So, if Christiania were to close tomorrow, would you look back at it and think it’s been a success?

JON BANG CARLSEN: Certainly. I certainly would. I certainly would. I think Christianita’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’re courageous enough, to create our own surroundings–that we can decide our own way of living. We can actually kick down the walls to get out in the open air and at least try to do it, right?

ROMAN MARS: 99% Invisible was reported this week by Scott Gurian. Edited by Joe Rosenberg. With additional reporting by Kim Hansen, Naomi Fowler and Palle Bo. Mix by Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid. 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 and the insights he’s gleaned from it 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 Ulla Mortensen and to criminologist David Sausdal of the University of Lund in Sweden–who was a huge help with the story, but whose voice we did not get to include.

Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. Taylor Shedrick is our intern. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jayson De Leon, Emmett FitzGerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Lasha Madan, Joe Rosenberg, Gabriella Gladney, Kelly Prime, Jeyca Maldonado-Medina, Neena Pathak, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence.

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