Freetown Christiania

**Freetown Christiania** or **Christiania** is a former squat turned intentional community run by anarchists in *København,* Denmark that began in 1971. It has a population of around 1,000 people. It is possibly the largest and most famous squat in the world.

## Law and Order

In Christiania, the anti-authoritarian, autonomous quarter in Denmark’s
capital, they have been dealing with their own problems, and the
problems associated with all the visitors they receive and the resulting
 high social mobility. Many people come as tourists, and many more come
to buy hash — there are no laws in Christiania and soft drugs are easy
to come by, though hard drugs have been successfully banned. Within
Christiania there are numerous workshops that produce a variety of
goods, most famously their high-quality bicycles; there are also
restaurants, cafés, a kindergarten, a clinic, a health food shop, a book
 shop, an anarchist space, and a concert venue. Christiania has never
been successfully dominated by gangs or resident bullies. In 1984 a
motorcycle gang moved in, hoping to exploit the lawlessness of the
autonomous zone and monopolize the hash trade. After several conflicts,
the residents of Christiania succeeded in kicking out the bikers, using
mostly peaceful tactics.

The worst bullying has come from the police, who recently resumed
entering Christiania to arrest people for marijuana and hash, generally
as a pretext to escalate tensions. Local real estate developers would
love to see the free state destroyed because it sits on land that has
become very valuable. Decades ago, the residents of Christiania had a
heated debate about how to deal with the problem of hard drugs coming in
 from outside. Over much opposition, they decided to ask the police for
help, only to find that the police concentrated on locking people up for
 soft drugs and protected the spread of hard drugs like heroin,
presumably in the hope that an addiction epidemic would destroy the
autonomous social experiment[77].
 It is by no means the first time police or other agents of the state
have spread addictive drugs while suppressing soft or hallucinogenic
drugs; in fact this seems universally to be a part of police strategies
for repression. In the end, the residents of Christiania kicked out the
police and dealt with the hard drug problem themselves, by keeping out
dealers and using social pressure to discourage hard drug use.

## Environmental Protection

The Christiania “free state” is a quarter in Copenhagen, Denmark, that
has been squatted since 1971. Its 850 inhabitants are autonomous within
their 85 acres. They have been taking out their own trash for over
thirty years. The fact that they receive about one million visitors a
year makes their achievement all the more impressive. The streets,
buildings, restaurants, public toilets, and public showers are all
reasonably clean — especially for hippies! The body of water that runs
through Christiania is not the cleanest, but considering that
Christiania is tree-covered and automobile free one suspects most of the
 pollution comes from the surrounding city that shares the waterway.

Residents have built dozens of the houses now standing in Christiania using innovative eco-designs. They also used solar power, wind power, composting and a whole host of other eco-friendly innovations. A method of filtering sewage through reed beds, which means the water coming out of Christiania is as clean as the rest of the water coming out of Copenhagen's treatment plants, has helped the commune be shortlisted for a pan-Scandanavia award for ecological living.

Different people interviewed had different conceptions of how
Christiania was kept clean, suggesting a sort of dual system. A newcomer
 said that you cleaned up after yourself, and when you felt like doing
some extra picking up, you did. An old-time resident who was more
involved in decision-making explained there was a garbage committee,
answerable to the “Common Meeting,” responsible for the bottom-line of
keeping Christiania clean, though clearly voluntary assistance and
cleanliness by all the residents was the first line of defense.

## References

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown\_Christiania