@article{Winter_2016, title={“Environmental Sustainability? We Don’t Have That Here”: Freetown Christiania as an Unintentional Eco-village}, volume={15}, url={https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1122}, abstractNote={<p>How did an unintentional squat come to be termed an eco-village, and why would this car-free town reject a bicycle path? This article brings pressing urban and environmental issues together through a case study of “Freetown Christiania”, a squatter community located in the downtown of Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital city.  With a framework based on the concepts of sustainable lifestyles and Leitner <em>et al</em>’s urban neoliberal contestations, I identify Christiania’s alternative socio-spatial imaginaries and practices. Ethnographic field work consisting of interviews and participant observation while living at the community’s researcher house allow for an in-depth exploration of Christiania’s history and experiences, and their implications for conventional conceptions of and pathways to sustainability. I show how Christiania’s values and practices differ from the “green” priorities of Copenhagen’s carbon neutral goal, with resistance to Christianshavnruten, a proposed cycle path that would cut through Christiania. My findings show resistance to the dominant discourse of sustainability, for example through a temporal focus on the present as opposed to the conventional considerations for future generations. Christiania’s dedication to self-expression, consensus decision making, and collective ownership, allow for considerations on how urban citizens reclaim their everyday spaces.</p>}, number={1}, journal={ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies}, author={Winter, Amanda}, year={2016}, month={Mar.}, pages={129–149} }