|
|
History in the Street
by Poul Sverrild MA, archivist
With a population of almost 50,000, Hvidovre, a suburb of Copenhagen, is among
Denmark's twenty most populous municipalities. Hvidovre began its process of
suburbanisation around the year 1900, and was fully developed by about 1980.
Most of this urbanisation happened during a period in which no great degree of planning
took place. Regard for existing values did not affect the process of urban development
either, since there was no room within the socio-economic and educational profile for
aesthetic or cultural-historical considerations.
Moreover, when town planning came to Hvidovre in the 1970s, planning politics involved the
conscious rejection of the past. It is hardly surprising, then, that communicating the
suburb's historical preconditions and its developmental context, and relating the stories
of the locality are not among its greatest strengths.
The suburb's explosive development left Hvidovre with a physical appearance that was
clearly marked by its function as a housing reservoir for a narrow section of the urban
population. Hvidovre was created as a suburb for manual and clerical workers whose places
of employment were spread throughout the cityscape.
The physical structure determines the creation of a local sense of identity that builds
upon inner - invisible - values. But even if this sense of identity is very strong in a
section of the population, it does not fill the need for a more widespread local identity
built upon common values.
History, the story of the locality, can provide one such common value, which is the
background for Hvidovre Council's investment in the educational project History in the
Street - a project that turns the history of the locality into common property, and
attempts to make the suburb comprehensible to its citizens.
|
|
|
