COPENHAGEN, Denmark-
Denmark’s government has proposed a plan to regularize housing in a decades-old hippie enclave in the center of Copenhagen.
The counterculture oasis–home to aging hippies, artists, drug addicts and stray dogs–offers a sharp contrast to the rest of Copenhagen, and is one of the capital’s biggest tourist attractions, averaging 1 million visitors a year.
The plan to reform the area calls for creating a housing agency to assume ownership of Christiania’s buildings, which members of the alternative-lifestyle community have claimed as their own since the early 1970s.
Under the plan, Christiania residents would have to pay rent and allow outsiders to move to the area. Though currently residents do not pay rents, they do pay a fixed, monthly fee of $275 for electricity, water and other municipal services.
In 1971, hippies moved into a derelict, 18th century navy fort and established their freewheeling society on the state-owned land behind Copenhagen’s old ramparts. They called it Christiania, painted the buildings in psychedelic colors and advocated free marijuana, nudity and anarchy with no cars and no police.
The government recognized Christiania as a “social experiment” in 1987, and four years later gave the residents the right to use the land.
The new proposal calls for the construction of about 200 new apartments, and the restoration of most of the original buildings on the 84-acre former naval barracks and surrounding moats over an eight-year period. Some houses along the water will be torn down.
Most of the 1,000 residents–who must approve the plan before Nov. 15–would be allowed to stay. Some that must leave homes built without construction permits would be given temporary housing and then offered homes in Christiania.
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