thanks for your report – i look forward to hearing your podcast. i live in christiania, and just want to clarify the reason for and extent of the ‘no photo’ policy.

the no-photo policy was adopted by pusher street when the danish government decided to go zero-tolerance on cannabis. this has lead to a higher-risk environment for the pushers, who are anxious not to get caught on camera, as the police occasionally has confiscated cameras from our guests. the no-photo policy is disputed within christiania, but it is enforced and fortunately only applies to a small area close to the entrance called pusher street, the area wherein the sale of cannabis products is tolerated.

in the rest of christiania photography is no problem, as long as normal polite conduct and respect for privacy is observed = you ask people nicely.

christiania covers 85 acres, so there’s much more to the place than pusher street. and a beautiful lakeside, with a distinct blend of 17th century military historical ramparts, dotted with modest and invenitve selfmade houses.

heres a bit of history about the pusher street model – following harsh troubles with hard drugs, esp. heroin, in the end seventies, beginning eighties, the hard drug pushers were kicked out by the community and the addicts helped to rehab. the police would not collaborate, and as such the civic action had to be made.

after this struggle it was decided to never let hard drugs into the community again, and to start a strict destinction between hard and soft drugs.

and at the same time it was decided to tolerate the sale of cannabis within a small designated area, called pusher street. christiania wanted to live with a model, that enabled transperancy and social control, keeping activities visible. pusher street is tolerated under a number of conditions:

- to assure a minimun of resposibility for the commune the pushers are required to live in christiania. outside pushers are not welcome as they have a tendency not to care much about the community.

- the pushers had to help in keeping out hard drugs from christianaia.

The economic model for the Christiania community is special. As there is no private property, money does not play as big a role as elsewhere. everyone pays the same to live in the community, and no houses or dwellings are traded. Improvements are investments in christiania, that cannot be capitalised by individuals.

This has the added benefit that the role of cash is diminished as much as possible, letting people of all trades and means live door to door, without having to worry about real estate going down, but instead letting a focus on trying to solve challenges socially and let more important merits than capital govern how we live.

As a last sidenote, the effect of the zero-tolerance on soft drugs since 2004 has not lead to a reduction in consumtion of cannabis, according to the copenhagen police, the cannabis market has been underground, and the market is now diffused in the rest of the city, where cannabis is now sold obscurely along with harder drugs. Another disturbing sideeffect of the zerotolerance is that the market environment has been hardened and brutalised, since the risk has increased significantly for the pushers involved. Quality has gone down, and prices up.

The model enacted openly by Christiania for more than 10 years could have mitigated some of these issues, had it been adopted more widely by other cities. Instead the trade concetrated in Christiania as consumers from outside decided to delegate the responsibility for the cannabis market to Christiania instead of trying to solve the criminalisation locally within their own communites.

Thanks again for the report.

best / ole

“Christianians should be proud and confident that there are many visitors who take pictures in hopes of inspiring the world, and showing that there is another way”

I don’t know dude I’ve never been but it seems that it seems like the folks that live there are doing their best to “get off the grid” simply they’re trying to live their life as their see fit and I think a large part of that included not giving a shit about trying to inspire the rest world. That kind of grand global scheming (whatever the cause) is what drove them to live in a place like Christiania.