Sustainability in the Land of Opportunity

by Anna Esbjørn Hess and Malene Freudendal-Pedersen
Sustainable Cities (www.sustainablecities.dk)

As the world has transitioned from industrial society being replaced by a globalised knowledge society, Denmark among many other nations is experiencing economic growth concentrated in larger cities. Consequently, many rural districts are presently battling depopulation, flight of younger generations, lack of work places, and financial cuts to public services. These issues call for innovative thinking that reassesses and develops the role of rural districts within a knowledge society.

Land of Opportunity
In an attempt to revive decaying rural areas in Denmark, a six-year partnership called 'Land of Opportunity' was introduced in 2007. The initiative is essentially a collaborative effort between the large foundation, Realdania, and three rural municipalities in Denmark: Thisted Municipality, Lolland Municipality and Bornholm Regional Municipality. The consultant firm Hausenberg takes care of the daily project management for Realdania with input and inspiration from a number of researchers and experts.

The goal is to find new ways of developing rural areas that emphasize their positive qualities, which are often scarce in metropolitan areas: nature, abundance of space, peace and quiet, etc. The total budget of the project is €26 million, of which Realdania contributes €14 million and each of the three municipalities €4 million.

Redeveloping rural districts
We spoke with Signe Sloth Hansen, daily project manager of 'Land of Opportunity,' to learn more about the initiative and the knowledge that it has accumulated regarding sustainability in rural areas.

"The most striking challenges that Danish rural areas face are the decay of buildings and depopulation, particularly with regard to younger generations relocating to big cities," she explains. "At a certain point, there are not enough people to support a positive development and the areas decay in a downward spiral."

'Land of opportunity' has initiated 10 demonstration projects in the three Danish municipalities that re-think the role of rural areas in the knowledge society. The primary objective is to illustrate how Danish rural areas are not poor versions of big cities but sustainable alternatives with completely different qualities and development opportunities.

Sustainability, according to Signe Sloth Hansen, is already a part of the mindset of rural areas. "Villages and rural districts in Denmark talk about sustainability all the time; especially with regards to environmental sustainability. As part of Land of Opportunity, Lolland Municipality has started the project 'Energy Village Horslunde' that aims to create a CO2-neutral village. The project will zoom in on energy efficiency at a village level by looking at e.g. people's everyday lives, transportation patterns and strategies for renovating single family homes for energy-efficiency."

Horslunde already has an ecological community garden and various energy-saving projects but a major challenge is to find ways to reduce energy consumption in private homes. "The idea is to found a 'climate contract' between the Municipality and citizens of Horslunde that commits everyone in the village to engage in energy-saving activities and investments," Signe Sloth Hansen explains. "One of the proposed methods to reduce energy is to form networks and partnerships with local entrepreneurs and builders so that they in the process of providing energy-efficient building renovation services can exchange experiences and expand their technical knowledge."

From cities to villages
Despite their urban focus, the cases of the Sustainable Cities™ database offer many ideas relevant to the sustainable redevelopment of rural districts. One example is Perth's sustainable mobility plan, in which the city applied strategies that got people to reduce their daily car trips by an overall 14% and replace them with public transport or bicycle use. Employing relatively limited resources, the city put effort into informing individual households and discovered a huge gap between citizen perception and reality. Typically, people thought a bike or public transport journey would take twice as long as it actually did and would cost a third more than the actual fare.

In Horslunde, the same method of informing households can be used to influence transportation patterns. "The idea is to look at people's mobility patterns and encourage them to consider alternatives to the car by showing them how much energy they can save and by creating attractive alternatives," Signe Sloth Hansen elaborates. "Car-sharing is one sustainable transportation strategy that could also work on a village scale. However, car-sharing is not something we see in Danish villages yet - but why not? It is a question of making the sustainable choice the most logical choice."

Another example from the Sustainable Cities™ database is the Gothenburg food project, which encourages small-scale local food production as an important part of a sustainable future. With the move away from mass production of as much food as possible, farm-based areas can learn from such food initiatives and concern themselves more with new consumer values such as the identity of local cuisine or the wellbeing of nature in the food production process. This necessitates a new line of thinking.

"Today, rural districts can no longer sustain themselves through the primary sector, i.e. farming, fishing etc.," Signe Sloth Hansen explains. "They have to come up with new ways of making an income."

In Lolland, the project is facilitating a network between a number of manor houses in the region to create a bike track or an 'experience route' that allows people to enjoy an intimate ride through the farmlands. "Traditionally, the manors played a very active and important role for the local community as they managed large entities of land and employed a large number of people agricultural production," she continues. "The manors and the landscape between them represent a major unrealized resource and quality in the region and the project aims at making this visible and accessible to the public."

Learning to think in new ways
New perspectives and ideas make up an important part of sustainable redevelopment. Believing in possible impossibilities and getting past conventional mindsets can open up new opportunities. Now, the big question is how we encourage these new ways of thinking.

"In The Land of Opportunity project, we talk about 'home blindness," Signe Sloth Hansen continues. "The idea that it is often very difficult to see the unique qualities of one's own locality. Getting past 'home blindness' is not necessarily about expert knowledge - it can be any person with the ability to see a place in a new perspective."

She furthermore points out that rural areas, as well as cities, need new methods to measure their progress and development. "We are stuck in an old growth paradigm where everything is measured in numbers. Instead, we need measurement methods that can asses the social and environmental effects of a project and provide a 'before' and 'after' view. It might be that a specific project only attracts two new residents to a village but if these people are knowledge persons initiating all sorts of new things, it will be a huge positive development in the long run."

Signe Sloth Hansen concludes by pointing out important lessons from the Land of Opportunity project. "In rural areas, people are already seeing social networks as the driving force behind development. They know it is all about creating networks that encourage exchange of new ideas and establish a sense of community. Rural redevelopment is ultimately a democratic challenge that requires one to be aware of everyone, including those not participating in the projects. Furthermore, we have to bear in mind that some challenges are so general that they have to be dealt with at a regional or national level - e.g. infrastructure and public service - while other problems are better solved at a village or community level."