1
VIII
NORDIC-SCOTTISH
CONFERENCE
ON
RURAL
AND
REGIONAL
DEVELOPMNT, Iceland
Author: Jørgen Møller, Architect MAA., Associate Professor
Aalborg University. Denmark. Department of Development and Planning
Division 2. Planning, Traffic and Roads.
e-mail. jm@plan.aau.dk
TITLE: The physical impoverishment and decay of Danish Villages. Causes and Consequences
ABSTRACT.
For the latest 30 years the physical environment (buildings, gardens, roads and spaces, etc.) in the
Danish villages has undergone drastic changes. Many villages near the large towns are drowned in
growth and modern buildings, and other villages in the Danish outskirts are hit by decline and physical impoverishment and decay. I shall mainly concentrate on the last-mentioned villages in this
conferencepaper.
The conference paper contains the following problems.
In the conference paper I attempt, at micro level, to describe the situation based on what several
years of field studies have shown. Subsequently, a short analysis of the social-structural development forces which imply great changes in the physical environment of the villages will be given. I
shall deal with both residences and production buildings and try to understand which are the causes
that so many Danish outskirt villages are impoverished purely physically with still increasing haste
these years.
When the causes are illustrated I shall discuss the consequences of the physical impoverishment in
the villages on a social level, a regional and local authority level as well as the local level, including
a discussion of the Danish rural district policy before and after the re-adjustment of the farm subsidy in the EU.
Preface.
During 2003 and 2004 it struck me that quite many villages in Denmark were in the process of
physical decay and that as architect one could not avoid noticing both the insidious and obvious
decay in all parts of the country. To me it does, however, look as if “nobody” apparently does anything about it. Maybe because the conduct of the discussion about the future of the villages, the research in their possibilities and weaknesses as well as the interest in doing something effectively
about the physical state and development of the villages apparently falls down between more ministerial and research chairs. Neither can you assert that the local authorities, the architects or the
people of the building trade have shown great interest in the case.
2
My village definition is dynamic and fluent, and when I write villages I mean built-up areas from 23 farms and a few houses and up to areas with 7-800 inhabitants. In the regional and local physical
planning such rather large villages will often be characterized as a local centre or a small local centre, but my observations point out that the decay and the physical poverty exist in all sizes of villages and all over the country.
1. An initial progress report from the Danish villages in the autumn and winter 2004- 2005.
Far too many Danish villages are today in a violently increasing and spreading physical decay. And
apparently it is not a problem which “anyone” has thought of doing anything effectively1 about, or
you could also say that nothing has been done effectively, co-ordinatedly nor whole-heartedly for
the villages and the rural districts for the last 10-15 years2 at the same time as the regional and business economic development has not been favourable for the villages (the Ministry of the Environment, 2003).
Anybody who goes for a drive in the rural districts in the Fringe or Phasing-Out Denmark, will experience that the situation is in principle the same everywhere. Decay, decay and decay again and a
strong and increasing impoverishment of the physical environment, and my observations about the
phenomenon also tell me that the decay and the impoverishment are not only a fringe phenomenon,
but also known in the sub-urbanized or “rurban” areas close to the towns so that it is not wrong to
say that the phenomenon is largely national.
The mass of buildings in a typical (fringe area) village is today of course a product of a large number of so-called ”mega trends” in the social development like for instance the structural development process of agriculture and the flight of the young to the cities to get an education and work.
The point is that the decay and the physical impoverishment exist among all categories of buildings,
and there are cynical property gamblers who have literally made the physical decay of the buildings
a deciding condition for the collection of a unsavoury living as hirer out of cheap and many times
strongly decayed village houses.
The more disappointing is it therefore to read ”Den regionale vækststrategi” of the government from May 2003 and
the Rural District Memorandum 2004, where nothing is mentioned at all about the problem with the physical environment of the villages. The Ministry of the Interior and Health & the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fishing (2004).
The recently published Rural District Programme 2006 of the government neither contains a krone for restoration of the
physical environment in the rural districts, and it is still more evident that the Danish rural district policy is rooted in an
entirely wrong place in the political landscape. It is still the agricultural trade that gets most of the means in spite of the
fact that the number of active farmers has gradually been reduced to 20000. The living conditions for the other 780000
residents in the rural districts will not be improved considerably through the initiatives in the Rural District Programme.
2
Lohmann-Hansen (1992) made this observation in 1992. In 2005 the situation is largely the same.
1
3
There has always been people in Village Denmark who have not been able to or who have not
wished to maintain their residence or farm buildings because of age, poverty, illness, incompetence
or other causes, but seen over a thirty-year period – the last generation3 - the number of decaying
buildings has increased quite strongly, and when 20% of the buildings in a village are in decay, I
suppose you can say that the village as such is in decay.
2. What did I then see in the winter 2004/2005 – when a beautiful snow-cover did not throw its
merciful veil over the villages and the physical state was hidden for a short period.
The front gardens
The first thing inevitably noticed in a village is the front gardens which often fall into disrepair and
are used as a parking place and/or a rubbish dump, which is filled with garden furniture from last
year together with the demolished bicycles, the plastic toys of the children, the cars without number
plates and on flat tyres as well as building materials that never came to use after all, and where the
visions for the future, for which the materials should have been used, were never realized.
The old houses
I also stated for myself that many old4 houses were in physical decay.
Some of them are no longer occupied by people, and some of them are offered for sale, but seem to
be difficult to sell, however, the majority of the houses is still occupied, but by whom the research
does not know. It may be elderly people, who can no longer manage the maintenance, or it may be
youngish people who do not seem to know how to do it. The occupiers may also be single parents
with job or on social welfare, or it may be the elderly bachelor who never left home or the divorced,
middle-aged man who has given up becoming one of the winners in the lottery of life as well as
people with as weak an income that neither building societies nor banks will lend money to them
for building maintenance.
The point is that the physical decay and impoverishment is rapidly advancing, but neither I nor anybody else knows something scientifically supported and covering about why. Or asked in another
way:
a) Who owns and lives in the physically decayed houses?
b) Why do they let the decay take place?
c) And what does it take to change the state of things and make it different and better?
3
Maybe it is in reality the last ten years that the decay has accelerated.
The concept ”old houses” is not defined keenly, but covers in our consciousness houses built before 1975, for which
reason also the problem about the detached houses from the 60s and ahead, which fills up quite a lot in the housing
supply of the villages, can be treated in this note.
4
4
Architectural style 2004
Another aspect of the physical decay – or maybe rather impoverishment – is in my opinion the foozled and unsuccessful building projects which are prevalent in the villages, because it is a fact that
there are activities in the villages. Some people are very active, while others do not lift a finger.
You may say that it is of course always better that people maintain and rebuild and extend their
houses than the buildings fall into disrepair. And still.
Many houses are irreparably damaged by wrong material handling, and much money is spent on
works which have to be redone after a few years and which raise the price and depreciate the house
so that it is more difficult to sell which is also confirmed through the recently published investigation of settlement in the fringe areas (Ærø et al., 2005/Stensgaard, 2005), where some newcomers
shun the recently, tastelessly renovated village houses.
In the country the culture of the ”do-it-yourself and the mutual friendly turns” flourish to an abundant extent, maybe of economic necessity5 or just of a wish to try, and they dauntlessly start one
rebuilding and extension project after the other without having the slightest idea of what they are up
against, neither regarding the building technical, the material handling, the plan and building act
legal, the functional nor the architectonic/aesthetic aspects in a given building project.
When as (newly hatched) house owner you are facing the task of maintaining or extending old
property and have no knowledge and insight in construction, practical garden art and architecture, it
is quite easy and also understandable that you familiarize yourself with it in the enormous supply of
free building market catalogues which every week drops through the letter slit, and when the lifestyle mantra of the time is that “I will make a difference”, then you do not necessarily fit your new
or rebuilt house in a maybe more humble, contextual connection in relation to the surrounding
buildings and street room.
In connection with the maintenance of the existing house construction mass you may say that both
too little and too much money gives problems – each in their own way.
The new residences
On the rebuilding side within the residential housing in the villages we have, for the last 5-7 years,
seen a lot of Swedish wooden houses or American inspired log houses and log cabins which I suppose nobody will assert fit beautifully and are a natural prolongation of Danish construction tradition. At the same time a lot of package-deal houses are constructed with integrated car shelter,
kitchen bays and pagoda curves in the overhang as beloved, architectonical means. It is all indica-
5
Tanvig talkes about a kind of survival economy in the fringe areas of the country. Lecture at DGI, Vingsted
25.04.2005.
5
tive of a widespread lack among the builders of understanding of and insight into regional and
local construction traditions.
It means that also the residential rebuilding often implies an impoverishment of the construction
culture and the physical environment in villages and rural districts as such.
The superfluous farm buildings.
The superfluous farm buildings in the villages6 is a complex problem, and the challenges certainly
are not the same for the different categories of buildings and different categories of villages 7.
In spite of the agrarian reforms and the enclosure with scattering of a number of farms at the end of
the 18th century and 50 years ahead there are still extremely many villages which today, 150-200
years after the reforms, in their physical structure and everyday life are characterized by active, professional farms with the environmental influences that active farms liberate to the surroundings with
smell, heavy traffic, noise and ordinary dynamic disorder around by buildings8.
Besides the active farms we find the more hobby-marked agricultural activities which only to a
small extent influence the village with the same factors as the professional farms.
Quite many farm buildings are no longer in active use after scattering of the farm or after structural
rationalisations, and some of them have been taken out of active operation for several years, but
stand like when they were left, and still others are being transformed from farm buildings to something else within or outside the § 35 universe of the Planning Act (the rules about rural zone permissions), and finally we then find the farm buildings which for a number of years have been used for
other purposes.
6
Minister of the Environment Conny Hedegaard (Hedegaard, 2005) said in her contribution to the nature conference at
Christiansborg 03.03.2005 that the countryside – the open country – has to be cleared by inventing one or more kinds
of demolition support. That is indeed ok, but our research shows that there are quite many and maybe more superfluous
farm buildings in the villages than outside. The challenge and the possible future interventions must necessarily be
widely different for superfluous farm buildings in the open country and in the villages, or you may say that in a planning and development context it is a question of two fully different challenges.
7
The Danish villages are very different in their structure and development plan. In order to mention some different
types we can mention the fort village, the winding road village, the star enclosed village and the block enclosed village,
and the point is that the planning task and the consequences of keeping or demolishing superfluous farm buildings are
widely different from village type to village type.
8
These years we unfortunately witness that quite many farmers have totally lost the respect for the close surroundings
around their property. We here think of the incomprehensive mess and the considerable untidiness because of the storing and ensilage of crops in pits near the farm, wrapped in plastic, which lie about, and with cut-up tractor tracks filled
with ensilage sap and stinking surface water which puts one in mind of the Western Front in Flanders 1917. It is not
unusual either that such provisional storages are in the field which does not make the sight of such areas better.
6
As to the condition description it is a fact that the superfluous farm buildings are each in different
positions from active farming to quite other uses with a lot of intermediate forms or on the way to
demolition.
For example:
Active farm which is on its last legs
Active hobby farms which use the existing mass of buildings
Recently closed farms where the buildings are still standing empty and untouched from the farming
Farm buildings which have been transformed into partially other uses
Farm buildings which have been transformed into other uses
Farm buildings which are being further transformed to a ”third” use
Etc. etc. etc.
The challenges are various
It is interesting and obvious that the challenge of the superfluous farm buildings in the villages is
strongly characterized by the local topography and the chosen way of parcelling out in the single
village from around year 1800, which the below examples can show.
When the farmhouse of a farm built around a quadrangle is situated up to the street with a garden of
10 metres between farmhouse and streeet like at Nørreskovvej in Støvring, and with the more or
less superfluous farm buildings behind the farmhouse and facing the fields to the North, then the
removal of the superfluous farm buildings will at the most imply less essential changes in the physical environment.
The situation is quite different, when the production buildings of a farm built round a quadrangle
are placed close to the village road like at Nedrevej in Albæk. Here the consequences of a removal
of the superfluous farm buildings will be nearly disastrous and extremely perceptible to the physical
cultural environment in the village.
The consequences of a not especially unrealistic future scenario in such a village will be that in the
mentioned locality it will be necessary to remove up to one hundred metres of street room creating
and culture-environmentally important buildings from the village.
7
The smallholdings
The superfluous farm buildings from the various epochs9 of the smallholdings rarely make out a
problem of a noticeable extent in relation to the physical environment in the villages. They are as a
main rule traded and maintained in a good way, probably because the size of land and building
masses makes it manageable financially and physically to use and maintain them, and with that they
become attractive to people who realize the dream of the life in the country with a small plot and a
couple of horses, or where the outbuildings can be used for workshop or garage. As a main rule, this
demands people with a job and a reasonable private economy.
The middle-sized farms
Today we experience the greatest problems in a physical impoverishment connection in the villages
with superfluous production buildings from the farms of what was earlier rather large farms of between 18 to 50 hectares. It is the use, the maintenance or the removal of these, as regards volume,
considerable buildings which is today the greatest problem in relation to the superfluous production
buildings of the agriculture.
Within the last couple of years it seems as if the number of superfluous farm buildings, which are
demolished, is in rapid growth. As there is up to 60 million square metres of superfluous farm
buildings in Denmark, and as more than half is immediately condemnable as regards the buildings
and their function, it is not strange that the owners see to it that they are removed, because in so
doing they save their expenses for maintenance and insurance.
The problem is, however, that it looks as if this violent demolition need takes place without the
least, preceding attitude to the culture-historical value of the buildings or their function in the street
and space structure in a village, and it does not look either as if anybody has thought of how, on a
short or long view, to use or treat these newly created, large, open spaces, which appear as ugly
scars in the morphology of the village. To most of the owners of such an abolished, partly demolished farm it will nearly always be financially impossible to build something that can come up to
the surviving, often large and powerful farmhouses, which were built 80-100 years ago.
The problem is, as indicated earlier, extremely complex, because exactly this type of superfluous
farm buildings are not old and valuable enough to be preserved, and they are not used for sensible
purposes either through a new application. There are simply too many superfluous square metres in
the country to find uses for them. However, they still make out a considerable part of both the village structural and building cultural heritage in our villages and in the open country.
9
Most of the smallholdings are located outside the villages in rather large or small parcelling outs, but for all that there
is a good deal of buildings from earlier, active smallholdings in the villages (see table 1).
8
Try to imagine that in connection with a new amendment to the Planning Act in spring 2006 an
obligatory and thorough local authority registration and succeeding village and open country planning were demanded which take a position as to which specific farms have to be preserved, which
can be preserved and which, all things considered, should be demolished as quickly as possible, and
that at the same time there was a possibility of granting preservation support and demolition support, respectively, for the purpose.
A tall order, yes, but surely not taller than it was, when the preparation of redevelopment and urban
renewal plans was started and subsequently the housing mass in the worn and obsolete areas in the
capital and the large provincial towns demolished, rebuilt and renewed.
It will cost money, but on a view the result will be more beautiful villages and a more welltrimmed, open country without the many, strongly disfiguring, superfluous and more or less strongly decayed, superfluous farms, which characterize the Danish rural areas, especially when we get a
little away from the largish towns, where financially strong urban farmers still have not taken over
and probably never will.
The superfluous farmhouses
The superfluous residences of the agriculture also make out a problem in the decay and impoverishment discussion. Kræn Ole Birkkjær (Ministry of the Environment, National Forest and Nature
Agency, 2003) points out that there are 120000 residences attached to the agriculture. Of these it is
expected that only half will be necessary for agriculturally related settlement in 10 years. 30000
houses will pass to other owners, and 30000 ought to be removed, but nobody today knows which.
All the above forms of appearance are in my opinion expressions of a violent impoverishment
of the physical environment of the village.
Summing up it is therefore clear that because of the comprehensive, broad-spectred and many-facetted physical decay and the impoverishment ranging from the abandoned front garden, the unsuccessful building renovation and the unsuccessful choice of materials over the extension which is out
of proportions, and development after the package-deal level concepts of Danish or foreign origin,
together with the many distressed or demolished farm buildings that appear as open wounds in the
village, the picture of the Danish village as such in the autumn and winter 2004/05 is greatly despondent.
9
Unfortunately, it is also a fact that the local authorities have apparently given up in many places
10
and everywhere we witness badly maintained, local authority infrastructures with holes in the road
surface, smashed and run-down pavements, razed bus stops and leaning road and town signs.
The local authority lack of means, interest or professional insight may contribute to draw the village
further down into the negative spiral of growth which quite many villages are already in today.
3. Why does the physical collapse of the villages accelerate just now?
The questions and answers as to what might be called the micro level, in which I have moved
around in chapter 1 and 2, are as it appears from the preceding multiple and very complex, but a
few things absolutely push forward in the forefront, when we shall try to find the superior and social-structural explanatory elements lying behind the distressed physical environment of the villages. To me there is no doubt that they are to be found within a) the structural development of the
agriculture, b) the development within the industrial and production trade, c) the development of the
service supply in the private and public sector and e) the population movement.
The development and structural reorganisation process of the agriculture
First of all we must realize that an epoch of more than 6000 years is irrevocably over in Denmark.
The unbreakable connection between the agriculture and the village, which has been there since the
middle of the Neolithic period 3900 years before Christ and till the middle of the 1970s, no longer
exists.
The highly productive agriculture of today is no longer in need of the villages and the service obtainable there, nor do the villages need the agriculture, because it stinks, makes noise and smells in
and from the stables11, on the roads and in the fields. In many small village communities, where
there are still active farms, which also still extend their production, in or rather close to the village,
the problems about piggery ventilation air poisoning the air in the village have become still more
urgent, and it has implied that houses become unsalable or can only be sold at a reduced price,
which may mean that the house owners are caught in a financial trap and cannot move from the
village. Whether on a view this pig smell will imply that the houses in certain villages get really
cheap and thus speculation objects for house letters cannot be envisaged. Whether they become
unsalable and thus on a view fall into physical ruin is unpredictable too, but many buildings are
today strongly characterized by the fallout of ammonia vapours on roofs and coatings.
During the latest 20 years the agriculture has experienced a structural adjustment of a violent extent,
which both influences the ownership, the production conditions in the stables, the crop storage
10
Cf. Ærø. Th.( 2005. p.16).Newcomers were often shocked at the negative atmosphere, which the local authorities/the
state do very little to turn.
10
methods, the production forms and the methods of cultivation of the fields, including also the adjustment of boundaries, etc. Altogether this has implied a reduction in the nature contents and that
the biodiversity has become smaller. At the same time the driving of the agriculture with machines
and crops gradually makes out a not insignificant traffic security problem on the road system of the
rural districts and the villages. When the number of farms goes down, the single farmer must drive
longer to get round to all his fields. To the physical environment in the rural districts this means in
many cases that road sides and kerbstones are smashed by the enormous agricultural machines, and
this is in many cases an extra layer of “physical decay”, which can be placed on top of all those
mentioned previously.
The number of full-time farmers in a normal village can today be counted on the fingers of less than
one hand, and the number of buildings in use in the agriculture falls drastically, with which the
problem with the phasing out of the production buildings of the agriculture arises, and a large number of superfluous farm buildings are left, not only out in the open country, but also in the very village.
When people in the country today meet and talk about the course of the structural development process, I still more often meet the helpless and sardonic joke that “soon there are only two farms left
in the parish, the cemetery and that of the pig baron”.
The development in the industrial and production trade
The development in the industrial and service sectors12 has not been favourable to the villages the
latest 10-15 years. Summing up, you may say that the rural districts and the villages have largely
been emptied of workplaces both in the private and the public sector, which is reflected quite clearly in the physical state of the villages. In the villages, which are so small that the planning legislation checks most of the new approaches within industrial construction, the development has
only offered decline in the number of enterprises and workplaces. The agriculturally related enterprises like grain and foodstuff companies and the village smith, who repaired and sold agricultural
machines, have closed down in great numbers, and the deserted function-empty buildings stand
back. Other illustrious artisan companies, which earlier had their workshop in the village have
closed down or restructured to assembly companies, which have a number of service cars driving
around to the customers, but the workshop buildings often stand unused back in the villages like
empty shells.
11
You may say that the more comfortable the pigs are in the stables with air-conditioning plants, ventilation, etc., the
worse are the people in the surroundings.
12
The rural zone provisions of the planning legislation have made the establishment of proper industrial enterprises in
the village impossible. At the same time a large number of local shops have closed down, and in the local authority
sector the schools in the small villages have been closed with a heavy, business economic and pedagogical hand.
11
If we look up from the local level, then the analyses lying behind Country Planning Statement 2003
“A Denmark in balance” of the Minister of the Environment show with a revealing, pitiless clearness that even if in many ways Denmark is a small country with short distances between the villages then the result of the development of the latest 15 years has been that the country grows unevenly (again), and nothing in the statement and in reality indicates that this trend and direction of
development will change within the next years – probably quite the reverse.
The analyses show that at the important parameters like income, occupation, educational level and
population development they all point into the same direction. From greatest in the city areas to
smallest in the outskirts. Therefore we can today paint a “phasing-out banana”13 with bold strokes
at the outer side of Denmark from Skagen in north to Gedser in southeast. Here there is a large
number of clear, physical signals about decline and phasing-out.
What we are witnessing is a rapidly accelerating phasing out of the traditional bastions and strength
positions of the industrial society, which are priced out by countries, where the price of manual
manpower is lower than in Denmark, and a contemporary, violent structural rationalisation in the
primary sectors. Thus the contours of a future A and B Denmark are outlined, and we may already be well on the way to also having a C Denmark, i.e. the outskirts of the fringe areas14.
There are also considerable differences in the internal development of the periphery counties, because also here a centralisation is taking place. The migration takes place from the small places towards the towns and from the small towns towards the larger and largest towns. It is especially
problematic, when it is the young people carrying the future, who travel away. It is thus a question
of drainage of young and flexible brain capacity, which both on a short, and maybe especially a
longer view will become a great problem for the future development possibilities of the fringe areas.
The most essential incentive behind this develop is to be found in the fact that the knowledgeheavy, development-oriented economic life is centralizing in the central parts of the growth regions.
Therefore we can talk about the so-called Matthew effect – the one who has much shall be given
much. Or as it is stated in the Country Planning Statement page 28: “The places where knowledge
is produced and sold will therefore be favoured”.
Therefore many of the young travel away to get an education, and they probably never return, because the labour market in the outskirts does not match the wishes and career plans of these well13
After inspiration from Hanne W. Tanvig. Centre for research and development in the rural districts. Southern Danish
University.
14
See also Christoffersen, H. (2003) Det danske bymønster og landdistrikterne.
12
educated young people, both because the public sector and the private economic life are centralizing, and the provinces do not offer a broad labour market with attractive jobs, also for the highly
educated, just as the absence of a varied culture life at a high level draws in the same direction –
away from the provinces (Møller, 2003).
Private and public service
The story about the development in the service trades in rural districts and villages is an account,
the underlying main incentive of which is the inexorable structural development15, which has implied that today there are nearly no active specialities shops left in the villages, and the same is the
case with the number of active groceries, which falls drastically these years16. Left are often magnificent buildings, which, however, have not been kept up or which have been rebuilt beyond
recognition and without respect for the original architecture and building style.
In the local authority sector the development since 1965 has been quite hard on especially the small
village schools. The schools were closed down both for pedagogical and financial reasons. The
point is that these public school buildings, which were the ornament and pride of the village, when
they were built around year 1900, today often are rebuilt beyond recognition and out of touch with
the original architecture of the school building.
4. The Rural District Policy.
The development process generates a Denmark, where still larger regions and territories show all
the classic signs of stagnation and decline.
We find stagnation and decline in business investments, the population, the house building and
prices for houses, and we find the growth and overrepresentation in the number of unemployed
people, the number of elderly, insuffiently educated people, the car ownership, and not to forget the pendling, which is in many ways the expensive lifeline, which keeps the rural districts and the
smaller towns in the outer regions of Denmark alive.
The interesting question is then what are the visions and initiatives of the government and the parliament concerning the future development of the villages, and the first matter to make you wonder
is that the involvement of the national administration in the rural districts is distributed between
many ministries, which administer each their pool, and it may seem as if there is not the slightest
coordination across the various ministries. The following outline may offer an idea of the many
subsidies.
The passing of a new Shops Act in the spring 2005, which permits all – and also the large and largest shops – to keep
open on Sundays, is estimated by the rural district organisations to imply further closing down of shops in the villages.
16
Bille et al. (2004) document that in 2003 154 small (farm) shops have been established in superfluous farm buildings.
15
13
The Ministry of Economic and Trade Affairs: The regional growth strategy as well as the Urban Renewal Act. The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries: The Rural District Program
with Article 33, as well as Leader+. The Ministry of the Interior: The Rural District Pool, and
The Ministry of the Environment dealing with country planning.
The by far largest sum of money is administered by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries,
and here about 1.12 billion DKK are available in 2006, of which EU is financing half the expenses
for the Rural District Programme and a criticism of the present rural district policy has been that the
majority of the money is allotted to the agriculture and not spent on developing villages and rural
districts. Another criticism from the village associations in Denmark has been that the rural district
notion as such which is applied in Denmark, is not operational, and beforehand impedes support for
the development of villages with more than 200 inhabitants. In principle, the support can only be
used as a subsidy to the open country, and villages of less than 200 inhabitants, and the world is not
constructed that way. The public service, which is essential in the rural districts is found in villages
with a population of more that 200 inhabitants.
In 2007, a new Rural District Program will be presented, and at the moment there is great activity in
the ministry. Following targets will be in focus when the new Rural District policy towards year
2013 is to be minted
-
Strengthening of the competitiveness of the agriculture and forestry
-
Improvement of the environment and nature
-
Improvement of the quality of life and prompting to readjust the financial activity.
It, therefore, still seems that the agriculture will continue to grab the largest part of the Rural District Support, even though the number of active farmers is declining and by far most of the people
living in the country are working in the urban trades.
The rural district policy in the municipalities
As of 01.01.2007 we are in Denmark facing a drastic change in the structure of the public sector. In
brief 274 municipalities will be amalgamated into 99 larger ones. On county level 13 administrative
districts will disappear and in stead we will have 5 large hospital regions with the responsibility,
also, of drawing up Regional Development Plans including managing the development of a rural
district policy.
Today, many people fear that when the new large municipalities harvest the efficiency gains this
will result in a sheer massacre in the villages, by way of heavy reductions of the municipal service
14
in the small town communities, which will further increase the number of functionally drained
buildings in the villages affected by the development, so that some further negative dimensions will
be added to the somewhat traumatic description, as depicted above.
If this is the case, and it is actually just a continuation of the comatose centralisation policy which
incredibly many municipalities have led over the last 30 years, the number of decaying villages is
sure to increase in the years to come, which everything considered will also mean an increase of
cheap houses in rural districts suitable for property speculators and fit for speculation, and in this
way there is bound to be an increase in the number of marginalized people with housing and other
problems in Rural District Denmark. This is, however, to a certain extent dependent on the extent of
the increase in the number of empty dwellings, which will be absorbed by a speculative transformation into weekend housing, which is beyond the reach of the marginalized social groups.
The local village projects
Even though it is rarely noted in minutes of meetings and the like, I have over the last 10 years as a
village activist more and more frequently experienced that for local politicians, representatives of
citizen's associations and other people who give the development some thought and look ahead, the
attitude is such that the best protection against people with "problems" is to keep the house prices
up, in order that property speculators etc. will be scared away by the price of real property. This is
why many village projects, at the moment, are about avoiding that a village enters the "Spiral of
Death", where a shabby physical environment in itself results in house prices falling and the housing market in the village to a larger extent being opened to the very people they try to avoid.
Above, I have tried to encircle a series of development tendencies in Rural district Denmark, in order thus to be able to say something about how the development is at the moment, and for a series
of years ahead. I presuppose that the development features we know today will not change radically. The hope that the regional and business economic development will turn in a more positive
direction for the provinces does not seem to base itself on factual circumstances and future prospects.
If these prospects for the future are frightening for the new large municipalities, it will be necessary
to intervene with strong, immediate initiatives such as buying up with subsequent demolition in
view, or you could join non-profit-making house renovation projects in the villages with an active
use of the possibilities for Village Renewal in a broad sense.
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At a longer view it must be a question of a village planning, which is not just hot air and fancy
paper plans. As it is, there have been far too many of them for far too many years.
After qualified and thorough analyses, villages should be pointed out, where investments in village
survival should be made as future good and stable localities. This will probably imply public purchase, redevelopment, demolition, urban and housing renewal to a considerably larger extent than
we have ever witnessed in the rural districts.
This kind of efficient initiatives will cost a lot of money, and among village activists there is at the
moment a lot of uncertainty about, to which extent larger municipalities will mean an even further
distance to and even less understanding from the municipal policies. It can, however, be predicted
that in most of the urban councils simple election mathematics will mean that city politics will occupy most seats in the new councils.
The same scepticism or fear also leads to considerations that when everybody knows that the local
reform will be expensive and the council finances will be kept in an iron grip by the Government,
we will probably not be able to afford to do anything effective for the villages' physical environment.
If society has any future plans for villages and rural districts, it will be a colossal challenge for the
whole new, restructured, public sector to the effect that in future it will be necessary to work out
coordinated politics, programs and plans. All levels have to cooperate, from the national, EU-financed rural district policy over the Regional Development plans of the regions to the primary
council level where the municipalities now will become larger, and for the first time in generations
will have the full responsibility for the open country and the villages, in order that also the building
standard in the villages is increased to a level which a nation as rich as Denmark can be proud of.
5. Putting into perspective and conclusion.
Before we in Denmark start the basic discussion of the question: "What is Denmark to use the villages for in future?, and reach a clarification, it can be difficult to work out such serious visions,
strategies, plans and projects for Rural District and Village Denmark.
The following sub-questions can be asked in order to display the complex of the problems.

Does the Danish society have any interest in or need for keeping all villages and smaller habitations alive, and if so, why?
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
Do we need people to live in the villages for the sake of the agriculture?

Does society have to keep the villages inhabitated to secure the value of the loans granted by the
Mortgage Credit Institutes

Should we keep the villages inhabitated out of regard for the cultural environments, which are
deposited in incredibly many villages?

Should society keep the fringe areas and villages alive, because it is a task for the welfare state?
After all, more than 800,000 people live in such places?

Should we keep the villages alive in order to service and facilitate tourism and leisure life, and
possibly permit that a considerable part of the housing stock will be transformed into weekend
cottages without obligation to reside?

Should we keep villages alive because settling can be attractive, also in the poorest of villages,
as prices for houses are so low that almost everybody can join in, knowing full well that it may
lead to sanctuaries and village ghettos for people with even very alternative ways of living?
Conclusion
In this paper I have tried to illustrate how the Mega Structure Development with unrelenting
strength creates structural sacrifices in rural districts and villages.
At the same time I have tried to illustrate that it is becoming such a big problem that there should be
more attention to this phenomenon in the rural district policy. A series of simultaneously operating
structural rationalization processes in agriculture, retail trade and the public service sector have
brought about and continue to bring about buildings galore, which are superfluous and depleted of
functionality.
In the same way, the demand for houses is influenced, as the population to an increasing degree is
concentrated in the larger urban societies. We here talk about really big mega trends, which all
make it difficult for the villages and rural districts to survive in the form we know them today.
However, in my mind the question of the future development of the rural districts and villages entail
colossal future challenges for the business life, the rural district population and the public sector, if
it is to be hoped that they are able to resist the unrelenting pressure which the sociological tendency
puts on the rural districts and the villages as such, and especially on rural districts and villages in
the remotest areas of the country.
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