Differentiated decline in Danish outskirt areas

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.