Differentiated decline in Danish outskirt areas

Resumé

In the last 20 years, Danish rural areas have suffered from depopulation and economic decline, and this development seems to be accelerating. This means a negligence of buildings and infrastructure and hence a decay in architectonic and spatial qualities. A general schism observed in the discussion about Danish rural development seems to be that the main focus is kept on a national and regional level. The consequence is a lack of nuances in the overall debate and a missing ability to create positive developments, locally. Through studies of the village of Klokkerholm, this article investigates how potentials of a landscape urbanism based development (Waldheim 2006; Corner 1999) and the commitment from the local community in participative projects (Jones, Petrescu & Till 2005) can create differentiated development in an area of decline: A strategy using landscape and citizen driven ‘dynamos’ as triggers for a development, which aims to improve everyday life by creating new landscape, based spaces.