Prevention Areas  in Copenhagen no different from your neighbourhood

COPENHAGEN • Hørgården has been labelled a “Prevention Area” since 2013.

The community however does not believe they live on the island of crime that the label can makes it seem to be. 

"This neighbourhood is no different from where you live", Marie Bredager Nielsen says.

Hørgården is a housing complex in Copenhagen of about 1500 inhabitants and is on the government's list of "prevention areas". Internationally dubious, when the non-western population of an area that already lacks behind on education, income, crime and employment exceeds thirty percent, a housing zone will be listed as “Prevention Area.”

When the area's non-western population exceeds fifty percent, it is officially a “Parallel Society.” In total, a hundred and thirty thousand people in Denmark live in such areas, which, until 2022 used to be labelled as “Ghetto” and “Hard Ghetto” areas. Labels which, in the most extreme cases lead to forced evictions and demolition of housing complexes.

Martin Bak Jørgensen, immigration professor at Aalborg University, finds it “Not a democratic practice to have different rules apply to people based on where they come from. If a sixteen year old kid does what a sixteen year old might do, it can get his entire family evicted. That is simply sickening."

Recycling brings people together?

An elderly lady in Hørgården wants to remain anonymous, “Otherwise they’ll throw me out,” she says. For fourteen years she has lived in Hørgården. She points us to Lasse Olsen, who she calls the “Secondary chief" of Hørgarden. But on paper he runs the community recycling centre.

The recycling centre, which also functions as swap centre, is a place for people to bring things they don’t need anymore and get things they might be looking for. “I don’t stand guard here, it’s not like you give one thing, you take one thing. You can take whatever you want.”

When asked about the station’s role in the neighbourhood, Lasse Olsen says: “People also come here to hang around,” when he talks about the weekly sewing and bike repair workshops given at the station.

Marie Bredager Nielsen, a project leader at Hørgården's social housing provider, says that news outlets often report on neighbourhoods like Hørgården by saying: “this neighbourhood is on the black list and we went there.”

"Reporting like this exotifies the area by assuming that there’s crime, addiction and other problems, but this neighbourhood is no different from where you live."

She works at the local activity house, a community centre that provides its space for various initiatives. Among other things, Edda Bakbak and Ann Appiah-Bonteng, two teenagers from Hørgården, give weekly afro-beat classes to children roughly five to fifteen years old.

Ann says that, in terms of her upbringing, she doesn't feel excluded from Danish society. Even though her parents are from Ghana, she feels quite included.

"Because I am a Danish citizen and I grew up in a Danish environment. I think everybody mixes well, sometimes, when I was a kid, I’d go play outside and no matter what race the kids were, if they were a girl or a boy, no matter their age, we were just all outside playing."

In contrast, however, Eva Kristiansen, sometimes doesn't feel very connected to other social groups living in the area. She has lived in Hørgården for two years and talks about attending the activities provided there.

“When everybody at the gathering starts speaking another language, it doesn’t feel like a place where I belong so much as a Dane. Then it feels more like a tea club for the people that speak that language. And sometimes it’s maybe Danish people that do this and then we are leaving the others out.", she says.

Eva Kristiansen continues:

“I actually feel that we connect more when we are fixing bikes, because then we are all very determined to get our bikes fixed. There is just a different drive compared to when we are doing creative stuff because we actually need each other’s help."

It's not so bad

Lasse Olsen shares his thoughts on the neighbourhood’s safety.

“When I was a teenager, I grew up not far from here and I knew I shouldn’t go here. White guy, short hair, in the evening I would probably get robbed. But it’s not like that anymore, it has evolved enormously.”

“When I got to work here and got to know people, I’ve not seen or heard anything, not even at nighttime.” He laughs and says, “Sometimes I find drugs in the bushes, but that’s about it."

“Of course I don’t know what is going on behind the buildings, but maybe the police knows something that I don’t."

When asking about politics reaching the recycling centre, he answers: “This is not a place for politics, we are here to talk about recycling."

This is a story for a European audience that could be run by the Dutch media outlets Nieuwsuur or NRC