RENTEN Transition Northwest

The need to transform the way we live, work and live is necessary. The climate and biodiversity crisis and the accompanying pressure on the earth’s resources all have an impact on human life and well-being. Despite research unequivocally linking unhappiness to the major crises of our time, there are few places where we can enhance the wellbeing of people and the planet simultaneously. Inspired by the Transition movement in the UK, We Do Democracy has therefore joined forces with Demokrati Garage and a number of other local actors in the Rentemesterkvarteret neighborhood in Copenhagen to take responsibility for our local area and get the local transition project RENTEN Transition Nordvest to sprout. The Transition movement has grown rapidly since 2005. The movement is based on communities working towards a socially just future with lower CO2 emissions, resilient communities, more active participation in society and a caring culture focused on supporting each other.

Our vision with RENTEN is to develop Northwest within the planetary boundaries while ensuring the well-being of the area and preserving a diverse neighborhood. Rentemestervej is currently paved and congested, with virtually no green spaces. At the same time, it is home to everything from private businesses of all sizes, associations and NGOs, a library and a vocational school, to residents with the highest and lowest incomes in society. The diversity of the area opens up many possible communities that together can create a local sustainable transformation of the Northwest neighborhood. At the same time, there are many different interests in how the land in the neighborhood is used, which can often be conflicting.

RENTEN brings together local actors and volunteers in a community of action that gives ownership of the local transition and the agency to take action on the crises of our time. We use participatory methods to envision the changes we need to make to reduce traffic in the local area, relocalize food systems and create communities and green spaces.

• 17 local partners and more than 200 neighbors have participated in the project so far.
• Over 2000 native wild plants have been planted in the neighborhood and 290 m2 have so far been transformed from either asphalt, gravel or lawn into green spaces with high biodiversity.
• Many volunteers show up regularly to events and a growing group of local stakeholders have taken ownership of the local transformation of their neighborhood.