Happy Birthday Christiania

- and Jinx, she's celebrating in style. Well, in a manner of speaking. Her greens got a trimming, trash a cleaning, and pushers a fresh supply of hash for tonight's festivities. What can I do, earnest traveler, put partake in full? I mowed the little theatre bowl outside 'Wonderland' and so met my ins to the freetown, the very cool original pusher of the lawnmower until he got an unexpected smoke break.

All this talk of birthdays has been thinking about time and space, and the points of intersection along that four-dimensional axis we call experience. In my urban ecosystems class, a group project involves retrofitting a historically important train station to a zero-solution stormwater management approach. Background: basically cities make surfaces impermeable (we pave&build everything), so when it rains sewers manage our water but they often flood (bigger storms)..Q: how can we also manage the water cycle locally - A: sustainable urban drainage systems, SUDS.

Back to the train station, the idea is that as an old historic site there's a greater question of what to keep and what to toss. Change is seen as more a negative destruction of historical value, atmosphere, and tradition than a wonderful makeover. Sure putting in a WADI would solve everything but it would destroy the old fountain out front put in by King F. in century X. and we can't do that! But I'm not interested in the details so much as the underlying question, because really history is continuous uninterrupted (and highly subjective) flow. The points we highlight are exactly those, the history of someone from a certain perspective. That we strive to be unbiased doesn't change the fact that the winners write the history books; every time we 'preserve' one history it hides multiple versions of the same city, events and experiences. Who chooses which histories are made available - and to whom?

It's funny that in thinking about space and time, and the points that constitute my human experience, I end up thinking about power. Most of my experience takes place in the urban environment, like anyone who lives in a city which is mostly anyone reading this. Think about this, urban environments (what people tend to think of as their world) are entirely the product of humans. We have built, imagined and designed our cities (often using, imitating or learning from constructions in nature) and thus created our surroundings, our lives and shaped our futures. Ideas shaped reality, reality pushed back, and they kept right on taking this waltz to make the universe. In practical terms, that has me wondering if I change my mind, will my reality change? Why can't I take active part in the world around me, if it's mostly made by other people? Which brings me round to power. Flows of power, like the energy available in a system to do work, control the built reality in a pyramid. Very few people at the top make the decisions that trickle through to create the lives of those below.

But sewers flood, populations grow, another year brings another birthday and things change. And right now sitting on a freshly cut patch of grass enjoying free net and rare sunshine, I'm optimistic. Because the future doesn't exist, history only sets a precedent not a certainty; maybe tomorrow will be better because I made today a little better. Maybe if everyone at the bottom does some creative thinking they can flip the pyramid, measure in the currency of human potential and not paper money.

Happy Birthday Christiania, you exist as a reminder of another history and honey tonight that story will turn up the volume. Let Copenhagen hear there's alternative ways to live, maybe some sound waves will bounce out your way Jinx. Listen up.