Gellerup is a district of Brabrand and western suburb to the city of Aarhus, Denmark. The name Gellerup is also commonly used to refer to a large housing project called Gellerupparken located in the suburb. The housing project was built in 1968-72 and contains in total 1776 apartments. Gellerupparken consists of the characteristic high rise concrete apartments constructed of large, prefabricated concrete slabs. Gellerupparken is the single largest housing project in Denmark, with approximately 10,000 residents.
Gellerupparken was built to last for only 30 years to address the housing problems that suddenly emerged in the late 1960s. It is still there, however it has been heavily renovated.
Today Gellerup is mostly known throughout Denmark for its multi-ethnicity due to a large concentration of people with foreign backgrounds. There are people from many places in the world, Africa (Morocco, Egypt, Somalia and Gambia) Asia (Vietnam and Pakistan) Middle East (Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine) other people are from Turkey, Chile and Jamaica. Multi-ethnicity shopping center Bazar Vest is also in Gellerup.
Gellerup is known for its high crime rate and social problems. In the popular newspaper BT, Gellerup was declared the most dangerous place in Denmark because of the crime rate in 2008. Arson is a common problem in the area. Like many other areas with social problems, the area has a lot of robberies, thefts and assaults.
In the beginning of 2007 a local Shell gas station had to close down after years of problems including robberies, assault on staff and customers. The area around the 24 hour gas station was commonly a scene of crime and confrontations between the youth and the police.[1]
In mid February 2008, the area was terrorized by arsonists for several days. Some days there were around twenty incidents of arson spread over the western suburbs. Most of it began when young people started throwing firecrackers onto cars from the elevated walkway over a passing boulevard. After this episode dumpsters and cars were set on fire all over the neighborhood. The fire department only went into the area with a police escort.[2]
Most of the lawbreakers are young people. Statistics show that more than one fourth of the criminals are between 10 and 14, and 22 percent of the 15 to 17 year olds in Aarhus live in Gellerup. In June 2007, the crime level went up by 67 percent
Gellerup is connected to the neighboring neighborhoods with several bus lines. Bus 5, 16 and 18 is going towards Aarhus City, through Aabyhøj, while bus 15 is passing through Hasle. A local bus line 74 is going towards the northern neighborhood Tilst.
Problems are common in the busses, and assaults on bus drivers happens too. The problems are so big that in periods security is riding along to maintain order on some of the city's worst bus lines.[3] Bus line 15 is named as the worst bus line with most assaults on the bus drivers. After that is line; 12, 16 and 18.[4]
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