Liquidating Architecture: Demolition and the Danish ‘Ghetto’, 1960 to 2018

Abstract

The Danish government's notorious 2018 policy document, ‘One Denmark without Parallel Societies’, targeted dozens of neighbourhoods as ‘ghettos’ and proposed solutions to eradicate them: privatisations, renovations and, most controversially, demolitions. In this article, I trace discourse and policies in government documents over the period from the 1960s to 2018 to follow their promotion of three forms of ‘liquidation’ (afvikling). First, modernist housing and landscapes built during mid- and late twentieth century signalled tangible evidence of welfare-state triumphs and ideals of utopian social progress through construction in concrete, turning liquid concrete to solid housing. By the 1980s and 1990s, such districts were understood as ‘problems’ to be solved through legislation and social programs and possible sites of liquid capital accumulation. Finally, the government has recently argued for their demolition, yet relied on stigmatizing descriptions and dubious statistics, including the areas’ numbers of so-called ‘non-Western’ residents to promote this ‘liquidation’ ( afvikling ). In following this history, I probe how demolition evolved into a preferred and celebrated means of addressing social conditions and unwanted (modernist) architecture, along with its construction in words, not walls.