“The Danes are considered the happiest people in the world, and Copenhagen ranks among the metropolises with the highest quality of life. Nevertheless, the city, which in recent years has been spruced up into a comprehensively designed boomtown, seems conformist and a bit boring. Or it would if not for two reserves that have remained unassimilated for decades, a thorn in the side of of those who would normalized things: Tivoli and Christiania, the traditional amusement park and the free town dropouts. They are states of exception per se. Places out side all places, as Foucault would call them: heterotopias. They celebrate extreme states and ecstasy and still complete for the status of the most popular tourist attraction in Copenhagen.

"Bellbrügge and de Moll went out in search for the perfect location. With one foot in the establishment and the other in the loser’s paradise, they are recording fading diversity and gentrification of industrial wastelands and working-class neighborhoods. How are atmospheres created? What moods do they produce and why does one feel excluded at home? The key motifs include the flaunting of lifestyles, antagonisms of work and idleness, order and disarray and their evaluation by society. The present volume and illustrations convey that Tivoli and Christiania are alternative worlds that offer room inside to that which is lacking outside”.