Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2009

THE URBAN DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN THE HOLMBLADSGADE DISTRICT OF COPENHAGEN HAS WON THE BILFINGER BERGER AWARD. A VISIT WITH SOME HIGHLY COMMITTED DANES.

Erik Hauerberg, the 49-year-old manager of the Maritime Youth Center has set a few pots in the shallow waters of the Oresund. Overnight he has caught dozens of shore crabs. Now Hauerberg, a wiry man with steel-blue eyes glinting in a deeply bronzed face, is letting them go a few at a time at the water’s edge. They make a comical sight as they scuttle across the sandy ground in a bid for freedom. “Ready, steady, go!”, cries Erik. Urged on by their school friends, the waiting boys and girls fish for the crabs with their bare hands. Whoever catches the most is the winner. Now and then a shrill yelp is heard, more of fright than pain: Those not careful enough to catch a crab from behind soon discover how sharp their pincers are.

Video: BILFINGER BERGER AWARD 2009

HARDY DANES
In the afternoons children in Denmark generally go to a “Fritidsklub,” a kind of after-school club. On this occasion around 30 children accompanied by their supervisors from the clubs in the Holmbladsgade district have come to visit the Maritime Youth Center. It is apparent that these children do not come from average families. Almost all the boys are heavily overweight—in a country where parents are usually at pains to ensure a healthy diet. Muslim girls bravely venture into the chilly water clad in headscarves, leggings and long-sleeved sweatshirts. “I can’t swim!”, shouts a boy from the jetty: In Denmark, where the furthest you can get from the sea is about 60 kilometers, most children learn to swim even before they learn their alphabet. “Doesn’t matter, come on in, it’s not deep,” Erik shouts back. “And it’s warm!” This hardy Dane finds 19 degrees entirely to his liking.

MIDDLE CLASSES AVOID PROBLEM NEIGHBORHOODS
“Many of the children come from problem families,” says one of the club youth workers on the wooden veranda of the Youth Center: “Alcohol, violence.” She has an 11-year-old daughter of her own. Would she send her to an after-school club in Holmbladsgade? After a moment’s reflection the youth worker answers, “Probably not.” Her reply is symptomatic of the middle class in many cities worldwide: They avoid problem neighborhoods, they move away. Those who remain are those who have no choice, and the neighborhood deteriorates.

For a long time the traditionally working class district of Holmbladsgade and its 16,000 inhabitants were caught in this downward spiral. But then some committed citizens began to halt the downhill slide. Since 1998 hundreds of local residents have joined in the Kvarterløft, which literally translates as “lifting the neighborhood” — up out of the depths of neglect, vandalism and apathy. The Bilfinger Berger Award jury were so impressed by this example of urban renewal that they unanimously chose the neighborhood in the south of Copenhagen as the winner of this year’s award. The Maritime Youth Center is one project that came to symbolize the Kvarterløft: This is the only place where many local children have the chance to play water sports and enjoy physical activities. “We try to boost their self-confidence,” says manager Erik Hauerberg.

ON COPENHAGEN’S MEAN STREETS
Just how much around here has changed for the better becomes clear when dressmaker Eva Damgaard, a stocky woman of 65, recalls the old days. Towards the end of the 1980s she was attacked in the hallway of her house by unknown hooded assailants. “I didn’t make it to work the next day,” she remarks with wry Danish humor: She was beaten unconscious. When she came round she discovered she had a tooth missing. She suspects that her efforts on behalf of refugees in the district fell foul of right-wing extremists. Later in the mid 1990s the police came knocking on her door. Had she seen anything? A 16-year-old girl had been raped right in front of her garden fence. “In the past people didn’t used to admit they lived here, on Copenhagen’s scrap heap,” says Eva Damgaard. By night the dark corners belonged to the drug dealers. Drunks staggered through the streets where ordinary folk were ill at ease.

THE NEW HEART OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Ten years later the picture is very different. The dealers are gone. New streetlights illuminate the area. Young men and women can be seen pushing prams though the streets. The cheap bars that once dominated the scene have been overtaken by greengrocers, jewelers, sports shops—and some outstanding architecture. Not just the Maritime Youth Center whose rounded shape is reminiscent of waves and whalebacks. There is also the Prism sports center where the imposing roof design of beams and frosted glass lets in a flood of light. And there is the new Kvarterhuset, or neighborhood center: A former candle factory has been transformed into a transparent cube that seems to hover above dozens of slender columns. This is the new heart of the neighborhood where a thousand people come and go each day. They borrow books from the district library, enjoy refreshments in the café, attend concerts, self-help groups, or children’s singing groups. The local district newspaper has its editorial offices here, there are homework sessions, physiotherapists and career advice for young people.

NO SUPPORT WITHOUT CONCENSUS
New life has been injected into this neighborhood. Why did this attempt succeed where others have failed? “Above all it was because of the “Ildsjaele,” the ones with fire in their souls who made such a commitment,” explains Eva Damgaard. Citizens like her who devoted themselves heart and soul to the years of planning needed to develop the optimum proposals. People power became the driving force of the Kvarterløft. Dozens of committed residents met as working parties often several times a week for months and even years. Their findings on issues of housing, transport, culture, sport and youth were signed off by a steering committee comprised of officials from the city authorities and representatives of local interests ranging from schools and kindergartens, local traders, homeowners and tenants to political parties. “The principle of consensus was decisive for the success of the initiative,” explains architect Thomas Christoffersen, who coordinated the renewal project together with project manager Jørgen Sprogøe Petersen on behalf of the city. “Without consensus there could be no financial support: An excellent incentive to reach a compromise.”

FOR THE RESIDENTS, WITH THE RESIDENTS
Take, for example, the renovation of local housing: Prior to the renewal project, a third of the homes in Holmbladsgade had no bath and shared a toilet with the neighbors. Some of the mainly five-story buildings had no inside lavatories at all and relied on latrines in the courtyard. Renovating these properties became the biggest item on the renewal list. Out of a total of 47 million euros in public funding, 70 percent was given over to refurbishing the houses, many of which were organized as cooperatives. But the money was not forthcoming until the shareholders in the cooperative had settled, sometimes only after lengthy discussion, on precise plans and agreed upon a financing concept. Only when the owners could prove that they themselves could cover around half the costs by way of bank loans would the national and local governments then contribute the other half. In this way the authorities not only succeeded in having 42 properties renovated in a manner that was costeffective and fit for purpose. “They also reawakened a feeling of pride of ownership,” explains Jørgen Sprogøe Petersen. “Because the residents were investing their own time and money, they began to re-identify with the neighborhood.”

THE COMMON GOOD COMES FIRST
Of course there were conflicts. Those living close by the planned sports hall were worried about noise. The local squash club wanted its own court in the hall. But the neighbors were won over and the squash players understood that their court did not fit in with the concept. The object was to promote mass sports for schools and the general public, not special interests. “Danish society has been shaped by over a hundred years of workers’ rights and democracy,” explains Ole Pedersen, who engineered the compromises reached by the sports center committee. “We learn from the cradle up to regard others not as opponents but as partners and think of the common good.”

THE FIGHT FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD GOES ON
Ole Pedersen is a friendly 66-year-old with a gray beard,given to wearing Birkenstock sandals on his sockless feet. At 14 he went to work in a factory. Then in his early 30s he retrained as a youth worker and spent the next 32 years wiping snotty noses, as he puts it, in the local children’s centers. Now retired, he has taken on a new task: he heads the Lokaludvalg, the residents’ committee. Not least because of the experience gained with the Kvarterløft, Copenhagen has set up bodies like this in every city district with their own offices and budgets to act as a link between citizens and administrators in the interests of a more direct democracy and participation. “Along the coastal fringe of our district there are a lot of derelict industrial sites. So we are working on a development plan,” Pedersen enthuses. Eva Damgaard is someone who he regularly encounters at meetings: “The ones with fire in their souls are back again.” The latest coup for Pedersen and his committee is the acquisition of a neighborhood motor boat. It is now anchored off the Maritime Youth Center and local clubs and youth organizations are queuing to book it. Birdwatchers use it to cross over to Saltholm, an island bird reserve in the Øresund. And Youth Center manager Erik Hauerberg takes parties of children and teenagersout fishing,many of them for the first time in their lives. In spring they catch garfish, in late summer mackerel, in winter cod, and plaice all year round. These are the kind of childhood experiences the Danes appreciate. The children of Holmbladsgade deserve them too.

(Text: Bernd Hauser, Photos: Uffe Weng, Ulrike Schacht)
Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2009