*I couldn't dream of visiting Copenhagen without
stopping by to take the moral temperature of
Christiania. This counterculture autonomous zone
is one of the most interesting places in the world.
I've been there many times.
*Christiania is a fort on a Copenhagen
urban island where hippie peace protesters, in 1971,
squatted the place and refused to leave.
They ran the place through endless egalitarian
anarchist chatter, while the economic base is
bicycles, tourist trinkets, and, especially and always,
marijuana.
Lots of public art around, but one couldn't call it
a Richard Florida-style upwardly mobile zone for
creatives; Christiania is a space for refuseniks.
Hanging out there is like visiting the Amish.
After many a summer of love, the bloom is kinda off
the Deadhead rose in Christiania.
Look a little closer, and it's getting a tad entropic.
Right down to the duct tape, really.
The autonomic folk of Christiania have never quite got it
about the suburban white picket fence routine.
But now there's a new generation afoot. They're a lot
less into album-cover art and a lot more into spooky
hiphop grafitti spraybombing.
The customary hashish peddlers have gone underground.
Maybe someday Christiania will learn how to earn a living
without selling the proceeds of its bohemianism to
alien passers-by like myself. If they do, they'll probably
get rich fast.
http://www.creativeclass.org/
Now, if there were only a way to franchise Christiania
INTO SINGAPORE, you might really see things come
to a boil!
