Workshops and liberation in Freetown Christiania: Tensions in a post-growth community economy

Eco-communities envision and enact practices which make a double movement: away from the ecologically destructive tendencies demonstrated by contemporary societies, and towards shared, participatory alternatives which are socially and environmentally non-exploitative. In spite of this statement, Freetown Christiania has a complex relationship with environmental sustainability, lacking many of the common understandings of that concept which underlie pro-environmental collective action (Verco 2018; Winter 2016). It also consistently deviates from many of the usual tropes or imaginaries of an eco-community, given its location in the heart of a major capital city and the absence of community-based food production. Much of Christiania’s soil is contaminated after its prior use by the state as a weapons store and military testing site and is not seen by residents as safe for producing many crops. Nonetheless, this chapter explores community economic practices in Christiania, particularly focusing on tendencies towards economic democracy and solidarity economics. It argues that
Christiania presents patterns for a post-growth community economy, tending away from the most destructive tendencies of capitalism. It also outlines, however, the acute challenges posed by recent developments. By doing so, we hope it contributes to a more granular, empirical understanding of the challenges and possibilities faced when building diverse and community economies.