Alternative capitalism and

creative economy: the case of

Christiania

Alberto Vanolo

Draft; final version published in International Journal

of Urban and Regional Research

1. Introduction

Creativity is certainly a popular keyword today in

fields like planning and economic geography,

driving a number of policies and interventions in

urban space. Usually, as it will be discussed,

these actions are market-oriented and driven by a

standardized vision of creativity and the creative

city. The aim of this paper is to challenge these

visions by analysing the Free Town of Christiania

in Copenhagen. This town may be seen as a case of

1

creative milieu based on social mechanisms and

institutions that are rather different from those

proposed in mainstream visions of the creative

city. In this sense, the analysis aims to

problematize discourses on the creative city: it is

possible to imagine a diversity of socially and

culturally embedded place-based socioeconomic

practices that offer an alternative to mainstream

and normative conceptions of urban creativity.

This paper is structured in four sections: the next

one will introduce the debate on creativity in the

urban space and the mainstream visions of the

creative city. Section 3 will present the case of

Christiania, discussing its evolution over time and

its peculiarities as an ‘alternative’ space. The

following section will present evidence concerning

the nature and the image of Christiania as a

creative space (4.1), and will analyse locally

grounded practices and institutions that stimulate

2

creativity (4.2). The final part of the paper will

discuss possible meanings of the Christiania

experience, intended as a case of creative space

presenting important insights into different ways

to organize localities and ways of thinking about

the creative city other than the dominant market-

oriented visions.

The reflections developed here are based on a

period of 4 weeks of fieldwork in the Free Town of

Christiania. Most of the fieldwork has been

conducted thanks to a local Christiania initiative

aimed at attracting researchers1: this allowed me

to live inside the community during April 2010.

During the fieldwork, I interviewed 30 local

inhabitants, workers and scholars, chosen on the

basis of my sensibility with a particular attention

towards diversification in terms of gender and age.

Declaring that my presence in Christiana had

3

research aims, and above all associating my name to

that of the local activist organizing my stay in

Christiania facilitated my interactions, and people

have been generally helpful, supportive and

friendly. People interviewed were asked about their

personal histories as inhabitants or users of the

Christiania space, use and perception of space.

They were also asked to describe their daily life

and their participation in the Christiania

governance mechanisms. Finally, they were asked

about their eventual participation in creative

processes, creative works, and in the use and

modification of space. In the case of craft shops

and other businesses (10 interviews), specific

questions about location externalities and the

advantages of the Christiania location were asked.

Interviews have been carried on in English – all

the interviewees spoke English fluently – and

recorded in my notebook.

4

Finally, participation in daily life and local

events, together with occasional chatting with

people, allowed direct observation. A vast amount

of photos (193) have been shot in order to capture

particular social moments and peculiar uses of

space inside the community.

The research materials have been organized using

thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998). Thematic analysis

consists in encoding qualitative data through the

identification of keywords, particularly within the

texts of the interviews, and then combining the

keywords and cataloguing them into patterns in

order to build up the argumentation presented in

section 4.2.

2. On creativity

5

The concept of creativity has been at the center of

a number of overlapping scientific discourses in

urban studies, including for example creative

industries and the cultural economies of the city

(Cunningham, 2004; Scott, 2006, 2008; Pratt and

Jeffcutt, 2009) and the potential of culture and

creativity in driving regeneration policies (Miles

and Paddison, 2005; Evans, 2005; Bridge, 2006;

Cochrane, 2007; Ponzini, 2009).

In this paper, attention is drawn to one

understanding of creativity that has come to

dominate the narratives of urban planners, informed

by the ideas of Richard Florida (2002, 2005) and

Charles Landry (2000, 2006). This ‘normative’

approach to cultural economy has been described by

Gibson and Kong (2005) as characterized by several

conventional wisdoms:

- contemporary capitalism is characterized by

flexible production, the commodification of

6

culture, the injection of symbolic content

into all commodity production;

- cities with highly skilled, creative,

innovative, adaptive workforces, sophisticated

infrastructures, interesting and diverse

populations, lifestyle attractions,

restaurants and arts institutions which

attract the ‘creative class’ perform better

than others;

- in order to compete in the new cultural

economy, places should seek to implement

particular policy initiatives: encourage

cultural industry clusters, incubate learning,

maximize networks and aggressively campaign to

attract the ‘creative class’ as residents.

During the 1990s and the 2000s, a number of cities

all over the word embraced this normative approach

as urban development strategies, and the

‘intellectual technology’ of the creative city

7

diffused quickly (Ponzini and Rossi, 2010). Of

course, the creative city normative perspective has

been constituted with a system of historically and

geographically specific discourses: several high-

profile ‘popular’ academic books (particularly the

above-mentioned ones by Florida and Landry) have

hit bestsellers lists and become widely read

‘manuals’ of contemporary economic development

thinking (Gibson and Kong, 2005), despite several

critical comments from the scientific community

(for example Peck, 2005; Markusen, 2006; Scott,

2006, Wilson e Keil, 2008; Atkinson e Easthope,

2009).

In line with a normative approach, according to

mainstream economics, and specifically to the

position of international organizations such as the

World Bank and the OECD, the production and

reproduction of a creative and innovative milieu[2]

is strictly connected to a proper organization of

8

market forces, in order to maximize the

externalities and economic benefits connected to

experimentation and innovation, and to minimize the

connected risks (see Baumol, 2002; OECD, 2004,

2009). Consider, for example, this statement at the

beginning of the OECD report (2004: p. 1):

Innovation and creativity are essential for

sustainable growth and economic development. Several

core conditions enable innovation and encourage

economic growth:

• strong standards and effective enforcement of

intellectual property protection,

• vigorous competition and contestable markets,

• open trade and investment in a stable economic

environment,

• a strong and sustainable fundamental research and

development infrastructure,

• sound policies and mechanisms to promote the

science-innovation interface,

9

• efficient and transparent regulatory systems,

• ethics and the rule of law, and

• a strong emphasis on education at all levels.

To put it briefly, the market mechanism has to

protect innovation and creative contents (for

example, via copyright and patenting systems);

support competition between agents; encourage

investments; promote research and development;

establish an effective and transparent system of

rules, laws and institutions; and provide skills

1 CRIR - Christiania Researcher in Residence:

http://www.crir.net

2 In this case – as in the OECD (2004) sentence quoted later

– the terms innovation and creativity are used together, even if

they have different meanings. Essentially, innovation is

generally seen as a process improving the current technology

(the stock of knowledge available to a certain society at a

specific moment), for example by R&D processes, whereas

creativity is a fuzzy concept (Markusen, 2006), as discussed

later in the paragraph.

10

and education for workers. Certainly many of these

objectives look sound and may be easily identified

as the base of successful creative environments,

such as the classic case of Silicon Valley (see

Saxenian, 1994), but critiques may be formulated.

Firstly, this approach implies an oversimplified

conception of space: space is mostly intended as a

passive container of economic externalities and

banal location advantages (for example the role of

sociality in space or the role of local culture is

neglected). There is little space for place-

grounded social practices in such a conception of

creativity, and Oecd’s list of conditions prescind

from geographical scales, as that framework has

been applied to cultural quarters, cities or entire

regions (in analogy with the concept of cluster:

Martin and Sunley, 2003). Secondly, presenting

these conditions as universal and natural rules is

distorting social sciences, implicitly supporting

11

neo-liberal discourses and perspectives, that is,

presenting the market economy as the only

reasonable option (see Ong, 2007). In other words,

according to this vision, ‘vigorous competition’

and ‘open trade’ are not assumed to be political

possibilities, but scientifically determined

ingredients at the basis of any creative milieu.

Moreover, the creative city toolkit (paraphrasing

Landry, 2000), stressing growth-led logics and

boosterism, has also been associated in literature

with a series of detrimental outcomes, including

the gentrification of lower-cost neighbourhoods,

zero-tolerance policing and the broader

displacement of progressive and welfarist

orientations in local politics and programmes, in

concordance with a neoliberal political vision

(Peck, 2005; Wilson and Keil, 2008; Atkinson and

Easthope, 2009; Ponzini and Rossi, 2010).

12

In addiction, conceptualizing creativity raises a

number of questions. How do we define what is

creative, and how do we distinguish creative

environments, people and products from non-creative

ones? The debate on creativity in the social

sciences originally derived from cognitive

theories, focusing on the intellectual structures

and processes that lead to insights, solutions, and

ideas that are novel and appropriate (Sternberg and

Lubart, 1999). When these are applied to the

geographical and social variability of the world,

how can we detect and classify creativity?

Certainly, Florida’s notion of the creative class

(made up of ‘people in design, education, arts,

music and entertainment, whose economic function is

to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative

content’: Florida, 2002: p. 8) is partial and

inadequate: recently, authors have shown that poor

people (and people in the global South) demonstrate

13

incredible creative energies by dealing with

difficult daily situations, by managing multiple

jobs, by coping with limited income, limited social

safety, etc. (Robinson, 2006; Markusen, 2006;

Wilson and Keil, 2008). As emphasized by Peck

(2005) and Wilson and Keil (2008), the existence of

Florida’s creative class is possible because of the

exploding low-wage sector that continuously needs

bodies to work in fast foods, coffee bars,

restaurants, sushi bars as waiters, room cleaners,

etc.: how can they be considered external to the

creative class?

If the concept of creative class is controversial

(and political), the definition and identification

of creative places is also problematic. The

assumption of this paper is that there is nothing

ontologically creative in geographical terms: a

creative city refers to the social construction of

an idea of creativity, implying processes of

14

recognition and/or self-recognition. In other

words, a city or an urban quarter is creative when

recognized as such by external actors – public

policies, investors, visitors, scholars – or when

the inhabitants and users self-define the place as

creative; it becomes creative when invested with

specific cultural and subjective meanings (and

practices), expressing a nexus involving questions

of cultural identity, power and capital

accumulation (cf. Shields, 1991; Zukin, 1991). As a

result, only selective interpretations of

‘innovation’ and ‘creativity’ are deployed:

creativity is only generally discussed where it is

possible for it to be harnessed in productive ways

for economic growth (Gibson and Kong, 2005).

Conceptualizations of creativity are therefore

partial, fluid and even contradictory. This may be

argued using as an empirical basis the ‘odd’ case

of ‘alternative’ economic space of the Free Town of

15

Christiania, in Copenhagen. As it will be

discussed, Christiania represents a marginal and

residual space from many economic perspectives (for

example, it is a poor area in terms of GDP compared

with Danish standards), but at the same time it

seems to be characterized by a sort of creative

field: how is that possible? What are the relations

between local socio-economic practices and

creativity in Christiania?

3. The Free Town of Christiania: a short overview

The history of the Christiania commune dates back

to 1971, when a group of hippies occupied a 34-

hectare abandoned military site right in the centre

of Copenhagen, surrounded by the city’s most famous

streets and sights. On September 26th they founded

the ‘Free Town of Christiania’, a community driven

16

by the many values and ideologies of the cultural

revolution of the 1960s, including ideas of

anarchism, the squatter movement and social

activism (Conroy, 1994). As stated in the Charter

of the Free Town,

The aim of Christiania is to create a self-

governing society whereby each and every

individual holds themselves responsible for the

wellbeing of the entire community. Our society is

to be economically self-sustaining and, as such,

our aspiration is to be steadfast in our

conviction that psychological and physical

pollution can be averted.[3]

Squatters started to modify the built environment

of the military base and to construct new barracks

3 The Charter of Christiania has been kindly provided by

Christiania’s Nyt Forum (a photocopy of the 1971 Danish

original).

17

and workshops in order to live and work: to give a

rough figure, today Christiania comprises almost

400 buildings and a population of about 900 to

1,000 residents.[4] The community has evolved in

many ways, and it still represents, in the eyes of

many supporters around the world, a stimulating

challenge and provocation with respect to

mainstream neoliberal capitalism. Legally, the

inhabitants are Danish – for example, they have to

pay standard revenue taxes – but, as will be

discussed, a great part of their social and

economic life is regulated by local mechanisms. The

internal governance structure of Christiania is

inspired by ideas of collective self-government and

4 There are no official statistics for Christiania. The data

presented here have been orally communicated to me by the

Christiania Nyt Forum, and are compatible with those

presented in other articles on Christiania, as in Bidault-

Waddington (2006), Hellström (2006), Midtgaard (2007) and

Amouroux (2009).

18

direct democracy, whereby relevant decisions are

always taken by consensus and after protracted

discussion and negotiation in thematic meetings.

A number of activities developed over time in the

community, including the running of social

services, health care, a local post office,

kindergartens, cultural activities, bars and

restaurants, shops and small businesses (notably

workshops for bicycles, ovens and furniture). These

activities are managed collectively, but many

people who live in the community work outside, in

Copenhagen, and many shops are run individually.

Probably, the most famous economic activity is the

selling of soft drugs, cannabis in particular: hard

drugs are forbidden, but soft drug commerce is

allowed in a contained space, named Pusher Street, and

by Christiania residents only (Amouroux, 2009;

Moeller, 2009).

19

Socially, the Christiania community is far from

homogeneous. Originally, the squatting was realized

by hippies with left-wing ideals, and the

population in 1972 was 200 to 300 inhabitants. In a

few years, the population reached its current level

and became stationary because of the prohibition of

building new houses (negotiated with the

authorities at the beginning of the 1990s),

determining an ageing population. Tolerance being

one of the keywords, the community spirit has

evolved over time, incorporating people with

different political orientations, while over time

Christiania acquired the reputation of a lively

stage for social movements: activism is a rule here

(Lund Hansen, 2010; see Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Examples of activism and political

slogans in Christiania

20

The social composition of the inhabitants looks

variegated: there are no statistics available but

casual observation shows it includes many families,

together with middle-aged hippies living alone,

youngsters (often close to hip-hop and Rastafarian

subcultures), middle-aged pushers and, quite often,

the unfortunates, for example, those who appear to

be struggling with alcoholism. This is reflected in

evident wealth and social differences: even in the

absence of statistical figures, huge wealth

differences are visible in the appearance of

people, and in the houses (and shacks) where they

live. Also, according to some of my interviewees,

many residents lament a progressive change in the

original spirit of Christiania, accusing a lot of

the inhabitants of having no particular alternative

values. The term ‘alternative’ is of course

subjective and socially constructed; in the case of

Christiania, it refers mainly to being different

21

from mainstream economic attitudes, intended as the

naked pursuit of profit, and supporting a local

social economy focused on ideas of communitarian

living, a self-reliant society and humane economic

practices (see Amin et al, 2003). Consequently, the

community is run by collectively organized work and

by individual contributions: the global budget,

allowing the functioning of the common purse, is

70% funded by residents’ payments and 30% by

businesses, which pay an annual negotiated rent. As

there is no official authority or ‘police’, those

who neglect to pay are ‘shamed’ by being listed in

the local newspaper and pressured to pay or to move

out of the neighbourhood (as in any other case of

lack of respect of common rules) but, according to

the interviews, it is de facto tolerated that some

of the local population (a rough figure of 15 to

20% was cited) is unable or unwilling to pay, work

or contribute. The management of the economic base

22

is nevertheless economically functional: a great

point of pride among Christiania residents refers

to the fact that they have never missed the payment

of fees and taxes, and they have ironically been

labelled ‘model citizens’ by the Ministry of

Defence.[5]

The community members consider an important issue

that of being (and to self-represent themselves as)

an ‘open’ society, physically and socially

accessible to visitors and to the other inhabitants

of Copenhagen. For example, it has been mentioned

to me several times (and it is quoted in the

‘official’ Christiania guide, produced and sold

locally) that, Christiania being largely a rural

and car-free area (only bicycles are allowed), many

Copenhagen residents come here during the weekend5 In 1995. The declaration is quoted in English in the

Christiania Guide on p. 8. See also

http://www.christiania.org/inc/guide/?lan=gb&side=8 (cons. 16

May 2010).

23

in order to take a walk. The condition of being an

outsider – such as being a tourist, or an observer

like me – seems not to be stigmatized: visitors are

welcome. As local shop workers testified, tourists

are necessary for living and not just for the money

they bring: they will take back home the vision of

an alternative community and they will share it

with the rest of the world.

As regards moving to live in Christiania, the

mechanism is informal: when a dwelling becomes

vacant, it is announced in the local newspaper, and

applicants are invited to a talk with the residents

of the area, who choose the most suitable

applicant. Money has no role in such a decision,

while the will to participate and to contribute to

the community are very relevant.

Legally, the Christiania community does not own the

land it occupies, and no one is the owner of the

house where he/she lives, or the shop where he/she

24

works. A 1972 agreement, resulting from a

negotiation with the Ministry of Defence (the owner

of the land), recognized the Free Town

(collectively) as having the right to use the area

on payment of a fee to cover expenses for

electricity and water. This controversial

concession has been renegotiated many times,

leading in 1991 to the stipulation of a framework

agreement that reached an end in 2004. The neo-

liberal Rasmussen government has manifested since

then a firm will to ‘regulate’ and ‘normalize’ the

Christiania space. On 22 June 2011, the Danish

government concluded an agreement enabling

inhabitants of Christiania to buy collectively most

of the land on which they live at the price of

about 76 million kroner (14 million euro), to be

paid before 2018. Christiania inhabitants consider

the agreement as a victory, and fund-raising

started in September 2011.

25

4. Christiania as a creative city

4.1 A creative Free Town?

From the economic point of view, Christiania may be

considered a marginal area, because of the low mean

income and employment levels: the average income is

about 106,000 DDK, which is almost half of the

average income in Copenhagen in general; about 33%

of inhabitants are officially connected to the job

market, 56% being Copenhagen’s average level (Lund

Hansen, 2010). But in the framework of Copenhagen’s

visions and promotional discourses, Christiania is

assumed to be creative.

In Copenhagen, as in many other cities across

Europe, creativity has become a central keyword,

particularly as regards urban boosterism under the

activities of the group Copenhagen Capacity, whose

26

main aim is to attract investments, (also)

representing the city as a relevant hub for the

creative economy. The Copenhagen Municipality and

the HUR, the Greater Copenhagen Authority, promoted

and celebrated a number of projects (cultural,

infrastructural, entrepreneurial, architectural,

etc.) in an attempt to develop and portray the

region as a post-industrial, knowledge-based

economy (Lund Hansen et al., 2001; Bayliss, 2007;

Lund Hansen, 2010).

Christiania fits into the plan. It is widely

considered and celebrated as a creative,

‘alternative’ space, and a number of visitors go

there every day. It is commonly mentioned in

tourist guides, and the official tourist website of

the city, Wonderful Copenhagen, dedicates a specific

page to Christiania. It is seen as second among the

top 10 alternative attractions of the city (the

first is supposed to be the Carlsberg Brewery).

27

Copenhagen’s discourse is ambivalent, on the one

hand celebrating Christiania, and on the other

maintaining a distance from it:

Christiania has been described as a life

surrounded by art. There is art everywhere.

(…)

Lots of creatively built houses in all kinds of

shapes and colours, like the ingenious banana

house, adorn the area and organic eateries abound.

(…)

Today many will argue that the village has seen

better days, however, the area is still a very

unique and refreshingly candid contrast to pretty

Copenhagen.[6]

The image of Christiania as a creative space is

nurtured by many features: most local economic

industries are knowledge-intensive (art shops,

6 http://www.visitcopenhagen.com (cons. 30 April 2010).

28

furniture and bicycles are the most famous

products), whereas cinema, theatre and music are

diffused forms of recreation. Moreover, every small

corner of the public space hosts a sculpture, a

painting, a wrought-iron statue or an installation.

Every house is partially or totally self-

constructed in curious and colourful ways. Most

things are self-constructed from recycled

materials, with a strong emphasis on ecological

sustainability: two examples among the many

possible are shown in Figure 2; a strange missile

installation constructed from an old washing

machine, and a bicycle holder realized with old

bicycle parts. Music is always present in the

streets of the central part of the town, and two

jazz clubs play live music almost every night.

29

Figure 2 – Examples of self-constructed ‘creative’

artefacts

Of course, these expressions of

creativity/alternative lifestyle are impossible to

measure and quantify, and it may be widely

questioned whether some of these are ‘beautiful’ or

not and potentially ‘economically relevant’ or not,

but it is evident that many activities in the

public space relate to the creation and consumption

of cultural meanings. The inhabitants themselves,

according to my interviews, sympathize with the

idea of Christiania as a creative space.

Christiania is a very special place for me, a

place for creativity, openness and freedom

(interview with a local resident, 1 May 2010).

30

What nurtures this creative milieu, in a place far

from the ‘normative’ approach to cultural economy?

As I will argue, the mechanics behind the nurture

of creativity in Christiania refer largely to

place-specific cultures and institutions.

4.2 Creative mechanics

The discussion on the specificities of

Christiania’s institutions and their relations with

creativity draws upon several (partly overlapping)

thematic patterns emerging from the analysis of

qualitative data. These concern the lack of private

property in the local real estate market; the loose

organization of creative processes; the nature of

Christiana as a node of a wide network of

sympathizers; the lack of policing and formal

control over space; the informal mechanisms of

31

knowledge circulation; and the lack of pressure

towards consumption and commodification.

The fact that no one is the owner of the home

he/she lives in may be intended in economic terms

as a deterrent to investment. Why spend money and

time renewing and buying materials when the final

output will never be recouped in economic terms? In

the place-specific culture of Christiania, the

question is often intended and framed differently:

since there is no possibility of selling the

houses, people feel free to allocate money to

whatever they consider will improve their life,

including the renewal of their house.

People have little money here, but invest in odd

things. Last year we [the area meeting] have had very

little money, something like 5,000 kr [about 700

euros]. There are a number of things to fix here,

32

like the roofs and the water system, but we decided

to renew a very old and rusty bench. I don’t know

why, but everyone thought it was a great idea

(interview with a local resident, 29 April 2010).

The lack of planning and technical building rules

in Christiania very much opens up the field to

creative expressions. Formally, the Free Town must

obey standard rules for security and construction,

but given the particular status of this space, no

one feels pushed to observe any kind of rule or

standard. This produces very radical architectural

expressions: some houses have strange shapes (as in

Figure 3), determining what Doron (2000) labelled

as ‘architectures of transgression’, that is,

transgressing spatial constraints in order to

produce different environments. The environment

does not always have a specific ‘resistance’ or

‘protest’ content: the aim is simply to change the

33

use and design of places using technologies and

materials that are available to anyone, in order to

provoke and to renegotiate the limit of what we

consider ‘normal’.

Figure 3 – Transgressive architectures in

Christiania

This results in every house being unique and

unrepeatable, sometimes a piece of art, sometimes a

shanty. This attention to originality is not

restricted to the outside, in the facades (as a

public display), but also applies (in my

experience) in the interiors, where strange self-

constructed artefacts abound. According to the

interviews, there is no evidence of social pressure

towards creativity: simply, everyone seems to agree

on the fact that people are naturally happy to

express themselves, and this place gives them the

34

freedom to do so. Of course, it can also be argued

that Christiania is a clustering of people who are

intrinsically fascinated by the hippy-oriented

communitarian way of life, including a liking for

‘alternative’ and ‘odd’ art. Investigations

concerning the processes driving the realization of

art installations in the public space testify the

ways in which creative processes develop.

It is not as someone said ‘we have to make paint

here’. Probably, one guy was smoking on a bench,

and then screamed ‘it would be great to make paint

in this way here! You can help me!’ (interview

with a local resident, 30 April 2010).

This kind of logic operates for other sorts of

activities and productions, such as the most famous

local manufacture, i.e. bicycles. Christiana

bicycles (currently produced by an external factory

35

but designed and assembled in Christiania) are

famous all over the world for their quality and

extravagant design.

The first model was realized in 1984. We had a lot

of free time in the laboratory, and we played at

realizing fanciful models (…). They are still

famous because we continuously keep on developing

them (interview with a local worker of Christiana

Bikes, 3 May 2010).

In other words, the free time connected with the

loose organization of work apparently nurtured an

experimental attitude, and, in general, the whole

Free Town is characterized by a relaxed experience

of time, with plenty of people just strolling,

drinking, chatting at all times of day and night –

a feature that may also suggest diffused

unemployment and social marginality.

36

A further element emerging from the investigations

concerns the idea that the Free Town is a node in a

very active network of people, including many

artists, who sympathize with the Christiania

experience.

We have many friends that come, visit and exhibit

freely. We have had Bob Dylan, and all the best

Danish groups are likely to play here! (interview

with a local resident, 30 April 2010).

The symbolic power of Christiania as a magnet for

artists and celebrities is evident. A local

(unverified) legend refers to rock star Lenny

Kravitz being willing to pay any price in order to

buy a house here (and, of course, he was turned

down). Concerts of international relevance take

place here, in a huge military building named Den

37

Grå Hal. It is estimated that about a million

visitors come to Christiania every year, and in the

Lonely Planet tourist guide (2007), for example,

Christiania is rated third among the ‘11 things to

see in Copenhagen’. In other words, Christiania is

interesting in the view of the market economy.

It is important to note that there are no official

activities aimed at attracting people: for example,

there are no hotels and no city marketing

initiatives. The Christiania community has just

institutionalized a small info-cafe and published a

short guide in English and Danish describing the

history of the Free Town, an etiquette for visiting

(no hard drugs, no weapons, no violence, no cars)

and a town map. Some branded merchandise is sold,

such as flags and t-shirts designed by a local

group of residents, but without a particular

strategy. To put it another way, Christiania is

open to tourists, artists, activists and people in

38

general, but never actively advertises for them.

This nurtures an idea of spontaneity connected to

local cultural expressions: for example, musicians

are supposed to be happy to play here, despite

doing so for free or for very little money; the

impression is therefore that a Christiania concert

will be more ‘genuine’ than elsewhere. Of course,

whether this is true or not is beyond the

perspective of this research, but this discursive

framing is popular.

A relevant theme connected to the proliferation of

events – concerts, art exhibitions, theatrical

performances – refers to management, order and

security. On some occasions – e.g. commemorative

dates, such as the thirtieth anniversary of the

Free Town – several thousand people converge on

Christiania at the same time to attend public

events (e.g. concerts). In a place where there is

39

no police (or any equivalent, such as security

staff), and where there is de facto free

consumption of soft drugs and alcohol, the problem

of event management may be relevant. Yet very few

accidents have taken place over the years: how is

it possible to manage complex situations (such as

the above-mentioned example of big concerts)

without rigorous planning?

There is no simple answer. An hypothesis suggested

in two interviews (Nyt Forum worker, 29 April 2010;

local resident, 31 April 2010) is that people

coming to Christiania – both to live and for a

short visit – are implicitly or explicitly invested

with a responsibility: they are free to behave as they

prefer, but they are invested with the consequences

of this freedom. They have to negotiate every

encounter with other people, without considering a

superior order or rule. This leaves a lot of space

for dialogue and interaction and definitely for an

40

‘order from below’, which is very close to the

anarchist organismic vision of the community.

Although this may be seen as merely a suggestive

hypothesis, certainly the Christiania experience

represents a social experiment dealing with

complexity and self-organization: it is possible,

here, to have creativity without a well-defined

system of laws and tutelage, as described in the

above-mentioned OECD documents, but on the basis of

place-specific informal rules.

Space is an important ingredient in the display of

creative activities: many activities take place in

public venues, and public space is prefigured as

‘safe’ by users, both in terms of personal security

and in terms of the security of the artistic

elements and the built environment. For example,

the possibility of ‘art’ installations being stolen

or vandalized is considered remote and improbable:

according to interviews, thefts happen sometimes,

41

but quite rarely, since Christiania is a relatively

poor area, and therefore not very attractive to

external thieves. And if something is stolen

details of the object are published in the local

newspaper, so that its use or commerce becomes

difficult inside the community. The sensation of a

sort of mutuality and trust between residents

emerges: everyone watches the common space, and

everyone feels invested with the responsibility to

intervene in the case of necessity. In addition,

the binary distinction between public and private

space is certainly present, but in a blurred way:

boundaries between the common space (such as the

street) and the private space of houses are often

absent or purely symbolical, and it is quite easy

to look inside the residents’ dwellings. There are

exceptions: some households, in beautiful

locations, are surrounded by fences, testifying to

the limits and contradictions of Christiania’s

42

communitarian idea. But public space is not

inhibited by too restrictive rules, and it is

perceived as open for any expression: for writing

poetry on a wall, for building a huge iron statue

portraying a frog, for whatever comes into one’s

mind. There is no formal limit to what can be done

and displayed in public (in terms of decorum or

political content); in the case of conflict between

residents (for example, regarding the use of a

certain space), the problem will be dealt with in

the area meeting, with a long series of public

(and, in some cases, private) discussions. This

implies a very intimate form of knowledge shared by

people living in the neighbourhood: the temper,

tastes and orientations of each one are well-known,

nurturing a form of communitarian trust that some

may recognize as a peculiar form of social capital

and knowledge circulation. Formal educational

levels are in fact relatively low in Christiania in

43

comparison with Copenhagen’s average: most of the

knowledge circulates in ‘tacit’ form and

particularly relates to working capabilities.

Finally, the whole organization of life in the

community never stimulates capital accumulation or

circulation. Although they are just anecdotes,

there are various examples of attempts to

demonetarize consumption: inside the town, there is

a stand where people are free to leave second-hand

clothes and small objects, and to take whatever

they want; once a week there is a ‘collective

kitchen’ meal where people bring and share self-

cooked food with each other. Of course, Christiania

is still visibly a capitalistic market economy, but

in a place-specific (and even contradictory) way.

5. Concluding remarks: learning from Christiania

44

As we have seen, Christiania is a meaningful space

in terms of a ‘Creative Copenhagen’ strategy. It is

assumed to be creative – and therefore economically

relevant – if made available for consumption in the

market, particularly as a tourist attraction. The

‘normalization plan’ may be thought as the attempt

by the Copenhagen municipality to remove the

‘excesses’ of Christiania, and particularly the

hash market. In fact, the municipality of the

Danish capital has never expressed the desire to

annihilate Christiania, but to ‘maintain’ the place

while ‘normalizing’ it, i.e. implementing specific

rules and ‘opening’ the place to forms of

consumption by a larger population of visitors

(what Sharon Zukin, 1995: p. 28, called

‘pacification by cappuccino’, and Osborne and Rose,

1999: p. 756, named ‘city of pleasure’). Of course,

to ‘normalize’ and to maintain the original

Christiania spirit is impossible: being an

45

interstitial space, it incorporates the desire for

autonomy as well as the realities of compromise

with the state and police (Pickerill and

Chatterton, 2006; Lund Hansen, 2010). It is a

laboratory for resistance and creation, and

considering the desire not to be co-opted,

Christiania is intrinsically an exceptional,

limited and ephemeral space.

There is more. Christiania represents a wider

experiment for the practice of an ‘alternative’

economy, a space in which to limit the general

neoliberal logics of waged work, corporate control

and privatization. Most of the creative milieu is

probably nurtured by the rejection of instituted

social heteronomies, such as religion or the state

(Castroriadis, 1991; Pickerill and Chatterton,

2006). The inner act of refusal and resistance is

itself a creative act.

46

The Free Town is, of course, a partial, daily

negotiated and often even contradictory experiment:

after all, the inhabitants are not self-sufficient,

there are visible internal social divides, and

inhabitants have to pay fees to the Copenhagen City

Hall and Ministry of Defense. From this

perspective, the dichotomies between

‘normalization’ and ‘antagonism’, or between

‘capitalist’ and ‘alternative’ economic practices,

reveal ambiguities: there is an ongoing

hybridization between market and autonomist logics,

producing an assemblage of place-specific practices

and institutions that may be described in terms of

‘relatively autonomous spaces’ or ‘relatively

alternative practices’ (cf. Curry, 2003; Gibson-

Graham, 2006).

However partial and marginal, though, the

Christiania social experiment is still alive. It

represents a serious ‘exception’ in terms of the

47

Western idea of an inevitable neoliberal universal

globalization, with a high symbolic power. The flag

itself, displaying three yellow dots on a red

background, is a well-known evocative symbol of

protest and resistance, so important that it has

been copyrighted (firms producing merchandise using

that symbol must pay a fee to the Christiania Free

Town): another strange contradiction – but

definitely a compromise with the market economy –

in this odd space.

The aim of these reflections is not to celebrate

the case of Christiania (revealing criticalities

and contradictions), nor to suggest that it can be

considered a ‘model’ for the development and

reproduction of a creative milieu. Nevertheless,

planners interested in the creative city may look

with interest at Christiania and learn something

from this town. First, that creativity, like

laughter, is not to be had on demand

48

(Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Lund Hansen et al., 2001).

Secondly, that creativity is a fluid and situated

concept: the Free Town is an example of the

infinite varieties of place-specific social

institutions that may foster innovation, creativity

and communal spirit. A number of social

institutions that are central to the Christiania

experience, like the role of informal economies,

voluntary and neighbourhood work, emotional labour,

community economy and social experimentation, are

simply ignored in most of the mainstream normative

approaches to creative cities, and to start

thinking of Christiania and other ‘diverse’

experiences as ‘real’ cases of creative economics

is also a means of troubling urban planning:

fostering the creative city becomes an open

question (what kind of creative city would we like

to live in?) and not an initial presumption.

49

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Endnotes

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