Nordvest

Nordvest (lit.: Northwest, short form of Copenhagen North West) or The North West Block is an area in Denmark's Copenhagen municipality. It is located in the southwestern part of the Bispebjerg district. Although there are no clear borders nor any official demarcation, it is broadly recognized as the area covered mostly by the Danish postal code 2400 København NV (NV being shorthand for Nordvest), although some areas lie outside this postal code. As of 2005, 44,177 people resided in the area.

A large area of the current Nordvest previously formed part of the Bronshoj-Rodovre municipality, which consisted mostly of low-density housing and small businesses. In the early 20th century, the Copenhagen municipality annexed the area from the Bronshoj-Rodovre municipality in order to construct a "socially democratic ideal where one can live from cradle to grave without moving more than a few blocks." Consequently, in the following years a large number of social housing units and homeless shelters were constructed and soon populated by evicted residents from central Copenhagen (which was undergoing a housing "sanitization" during this time). Along with the construction of social housing, the area's readily available workforce also built small and large industrial complexes in the unused areas between the houses. This gave rise to the construction of different kinds of housing, such as the typografernes hus (lit.: typographer's housing), a type of housing in which residents live in the above-ground area and old, functional printing presses are housed in the basement.

Through the 1980s, the Nordvest was increasingly characterized as an area for apartments, which were relatively inexpensive compared to those in the surrounding areas of Copenhagen. In 1980, the area was designated by the community psychiatric authorities to house people with mental illness among the regular population. This was done to "normalize" the people with mental illness; however, it resulted in a spike in vandalism and attacks. In 1993, the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of Social Affairs (Denmark), and the Copenhagen municipality agreed on a "holistic effort in the Nordvest" to improve the situation. This would later serve as a model and precursor for later area improvement projects elsewhere in Denmark.

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