Opening Rural Futures

Since the 1950s, most Western European countries have experienced a major migration from rural areas towards larger cities. In most cases, this tendency is caused by a decline in employment in agriculture and its associated industries, as well as the centralization of public institutions.1 In the Danish context, rurality is now marked by depopulating villages with unsellable, abandoned houses and decommissioned public institutions. This disenfranchisement of the rural fuels a reluctance to renovate as an alternative to demolishing and building anew. Furthermore, there is so much rural building stock available and no relevant programs to convert it into.2 While real estate prices have plummeted in the countryside, property prices in larger cities have skyrocketed, with developers demolishing even protected buildings to build anew in order to maximize economic return.

The Danish government is currently taking an approach of “strategic demolition” in an attempt to ease the symptoms of dilapidation in rural villages. In light of all this, the prospects for renovation practices in rural Denmark are challenging. Yet the built rural environment has great significance to society in general, even in its present state of abandonment and devaluation. There is a strong, albeit latent, relationship between the local identities of village communities, collective memories of place, and abandoned buildings. The potential for renovation in these rural villages is not so much about restoring derelict buildings to their original state, but rather rebuilding community cohesion through their transformation.