Gellerupparken

Mette-Louise Johansen, The Danish Center for Social Science Research – VIVE

Social housing in Denmark is perhaps one of the most significant empirical prisms through which to explore the social engineering of the Danish welfare state, historically as well as in the present. Like in other places in the world, Danish social housing estates constitute hotspots for political and media attention, and they have turned into laboratories for policy development and welfare interventions aimed at social reformation, cultural assimilation, crime prevention and order enforcement. The Danish case offers a particular view on the debate of order enforcement, which is structured by the specific nature of the Danish (and Scandinavian) welfare state. While  ghettos, slums, inner-city areas and suburbs in other parts of the world are often abandoned in a neo-liberal withdrawal of the state, this is not the case in Denmark or in the other Scandinavian welfare states, where the state and society more broadly ‘‘lavish’’ money and expertise on the problem at hand. The largest and poorest social housing estates in Denmark are places where the state is intensely present. As such, they constitute landscapes of homes, welfare institutions, development projects, associations, religious centers, schools and youth institutions, and police stations, surveillance cameras and street-based authorities.   

The relationship between architectural and social change, along with the focus of the Danish welfare state, is clear if we consider the history of Gellerupparken. Gellerupparken is the largest and poorest Danish social housing estate, comprising of nearly 10.000 residents, most of whom are migrants from the Middle-east, Somalia and Northern Africa. The housing estate has undergone a number of renewal processes since its inception in the late 1960s. The present plan, called the ‘‘Master Plan’’ (Helhedsplanen), is based on a ‘‘mixed class’’ paradigm that aims to solve social problems in disadvantaged neighborhoods. According to this paradigm, the mix of classes is believed to improve the reputation of the area, since socioeconomic progress is understood to be transmittable. The physical renovation aims at attracting the corporate world and the Danish middleclass while the less privileged residents are dispersed to other housing projects. While its effects have not been fully felt yet, this Master Plan is only the latest in a string of transitions. Changing governments have found each of these transformations necessary because of the increasing unemployment, crime and violence in the area. The changes have been effected under a cloud of urgent calls for special measures (surveillance, tearing down buildings, special state attention, evictions). 

While Gellerupparken illuminates issues of racialization, normalization and order enforcement, it is also a place of belonging, commerce and conviviality; A place of family life, of childhood, social life, associational life, religious life, gang life, and institutional life.