The neighborhood was formerly a suburb that has now completely merged with the city and it is characterized by several natural attractions, detached house sectors, highrise apartments and an industrial park.

This includes schools, kindergartens, sports facilities, a local waste incineration plant supplying central heating, a church, a library and a large mall that originally offered a post office, bank, dentist, doctors, general and grocery stores, supermarkets, restaurants, cafés, hairdressing saloons and a cinema among other stores and facilities.

All these stores and structures were originally owned and administered democratically by the residents themselves through the Brabrand Housing Cooperative, based on a socialist idea.

A two-story building, with 45,000 m2 of floor space, it was at the time the largest mall in Denmark, and was owned in part by the Brabrand Housing Cooperative.

[citation needed] Gellerup Center made great profits initially, but some of it was invested unwisely, and other communally owned elements of the housing projects (such as the swimming hall) were less successful.

[6][7] Bazar Vest is a bazaar in the northern part of The Gellerup Plan, owned and developed by Danish building company Olav de Linde with shops, rented mostly by immigrants.

As the prayer was filmed, German authorities found imam Abu Bilal guilty of hate speech and issued a €10,000 (roughly DKK75,000) fine.

[11] The imams and former chairman of the mosque Oussama El-Saadi have also expressed sympathies for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in several Danish media, including a 2014 DR TV documentary.

In 2014, regional police authorities (Danish: Østjyllands Politi) found that of the 27 individuals who had travelled from the Gellerup area to participate in the war in Syria and Iraq, 22 had been visitors to Grimhøj mosque.

[12] In 2016, journalists visited the mosque with a hidden camera, where imam Abu Bilal preached that women who were unfaithful to their husbands should be stoned to death or whipped, and infidels (who did not take part in Ramadan fasting) should be killed.

[17][18] In 2017, community leaders at the Grimhøj mosque mediated between the crime gangs Brabrand from Gellerupparken and Loyal To Familia which operates from the Bispeparken area.

[6] Shortly after the construction of the apartments, increased economic capabilities in the working class segment, inspired many residents to buy a house, reflecting a similar development across Denmark.

[citation needed] The Gellerup Plan has, through the last couple of decades, experienced a lot of social, cultural, political, religious and ethnic tension in daily life, and it is now officially labelled as an 'especially vulnerable residential area'.

In Denmark, the authorities have created a list of districts termed 'ghetto' based on observances against 5 criteria of poverty, education, share of non-Western migrants, unemployment and criminal records.