The Experiment Stockholm exhibition wants to instigate a debate seeking possible solutions to problems rather than just pinpointing the challenges Stockholm will face in the future. In the same spirit we got three people around the same table to discuss these issues and what could possibly be done to solve them. The Stockholm city architect Karolina Keyzer, Ulf Andersson of Naturvårdsverket and Anna Asplind, a free thinker who’s video work about the urban landscape seen from a different perspective is part of the exhibition – the word is yours. This was a looon conversation, so part one is below and we’ll follow-up with part two tomorrow
TS: Where do you think Stockholm is headed, and what kind of society do you think we’re building for future generations?
Karolina: Stockholm is definitely growing, so we’re really heading for a multi-cultural situation, with more people than we have actually ever had in Stockholm before. So we have to change and adapt to that situation at all levels in Stockholm. We really have to talk about it, and we have to do it as well. It’s quite an important thing for us. We have to welcome new Stockholmers, and we also have to live in a new way as well, so we can all fit into the new city.
So it’s not just a question of accommodating the new people, it’s a question of accommodating them in such a way that they’re actually incorporated into the city, so that everyone lives together in the same way?
That’s our biggest challenge, to actually live together instead of living side by side.
Ulf: That’s a very important issue, but the population growth also has other kinds of consequences. For example, it puts increased pressure on the demand for land, and also a strain on the infrastructure when it comes to transportation and things like that. We also have to realise that the growth of Stockholm is not just immigration, but also a large number of young Stockholmers being born.
K: One third of the growth actually comes from new Stockholmers, baby Stockholmers.
U: So there is a two-sided demographic increase.
K: That’s actually a very nice way of growing, because we see children everywhere in the city. Formerly we had the children moving out – well, the ones who could – moving out to the suburbs, when they got siblings at least. You stayed for one child in the city and then you moved out. Now we see that families are staying in the city, and older people who have previously moved out come back into the more dense parts of the city, so we also have a moving back situation, to all urban areas of the city.
Anna: Why do you think that is?
K: People who can choose usually choose to either go to the inner parts of the city, or to the parts that are close to nature. And since there are too few apartments in Stockholm everyone cannot choose, and then you go to the more urban parts where there are free apartments. Then you may not have the same choice, and then there is distance. But that is actually changing, and in the more southern parts of Stockholm, which have been sort of the suburbs, they become very attractive to young families who want to stay there. Areas like Midsommarkransen and further out.
A: For my work now, at this exhibition in Stockholm I have been travelling by bike between Färgfabriken and Handen’s Art Gallery, and I’ve been investigating the paths in between. The result is this video that shows all of the area in between, I call it ‘The Space’ that the car society has created, because it’s so spread out. What can we do with space in-between the suburbs? Because we have suburbs that some people think are a problem – I’m not one of them, I think there’s a lot of potential in the spaces. But there is still all this space in between which is actually quite monotone for a human to travel through, with your body, and that creates distance between places, and I think that’s where we should investigate these spaces more, to develop the city. To make these spaces more urban; the urban areas are too spread out.
U: If you’re talking about having an experimental attitude and looking for innovation, it is these types of areas that are very fertile ground for doing this. First, the renovation of the Million Program areas, that’s one area where we could use innovation. Another area is that the city is growing, lots of old industrial areas, like here in Liljeholmen, and lots of old harbours like in Hammarby Sjöstad, sooner or later they will be developed, either for offices of for housing. Now we have an opportunity to use these spaces because we have to build somewhere. And we have to renovate almost everywhere.
K: We have a situation where the suburbs are actually quite far apart from each other. To link them tighter together, that’s an ongoing aim that we have for densifying the city. So that’s what we mean when we talk about densifying Stockholm. Stockholm is built currently like an octopus, we have one centre, and then we have all the roads leading out from one centre. We’re changing that by identifying existing centre spaces, and then developing five or six new nodes and interconnecting them. And that means that wherever you live you have a bigger, easier choice of what way to go. And if you build within these areas that are already in the infrastructure system, you don’t need to break new ground, which in another benefit, and you also bring people closer to each other. So when we talk about densifying and re-connecting the city as goals for our city planning, that’s one of the main things we’re talking about, actually.
A: I think that’s very important because it breaks all the distance between people. Because when I’ve been travelling back and forth, there are no people in between.You see all the people in cars of course, but there are no meetings. There are so many beautiful places in between which could be used, and it’s very good to hear that you’re planning to do that.
K: And some places lack some services or people, or nature values or other values, and by linking them closer together you can actually benefit from both. I mean, that’s sort of also maximising the qualities in an area. Some people say that by building everything together that you’re just building everything into one whole, but that’s not how we see it actually and I don’t think that’s even possible, because all these places have different identities and they’re very important. You brought the industrial area of Lövholmen up for example, and I think that’s a beautiful example, because filling Lövholmen up with inhabitants, making it a living area side-by-side with the building that already exist will actually be very beautiful. It will be a very beautiful place to live, extremely close to the city. There are T-bana stops at Hornstull and Liljeholmen. This area is actually connected, but it’s not lived in yet.
U: Another important issue in terms of quality of city life is access to nature and to green areas. One of the main reasons why Stockholm was awarded the first ‘Green Capital of Europe’ in 2010 was that there was a very small walking distance for Stockholmers to some kind of green area. And I think one of the holy grails of city planning is to have density but to also ‘greensity’. With density you have lots of advantages like you can make efficient infrastructure, you can have public transportation. Here I think we have to be a bit more innovative and I think the Royal Sea Port has done some good work with not only preserving nature but also creating new nature. For example green roofs, biotope roofs, stuff like that. We have to preserve nature but we also have to create and construct nature.
K: We have the benefit here of having both green and grey nature, but we also have all the water. So we have a very big public common space that we can link all of these other nature areas together with, and that’s got a lot of potential for transport here in Stockholm, that’s now taken into consideration in planning. It wasn’t before. But having the new Stockholm ‘Blue’ plan is as important as having the green plan.
A: Talking about transportation, everyone knows that the cars take up a lot of space in the city, from all the 60s planning. It’s very obvious when you get out of the inner city. Obviously in the inner city it’s a problem, but when you get outside you see huge parking areas, huge roads, everything is huge. So if you want to connect these places, I’m curious as to how you think about that, because it’s a barrier to the human body to travel through this landscape because there are so many barriers to cross. For me as a cyclist, for example, I feel very vulnerable all the way. There are also audible barriers, because it’s so loud all the time, so you cannot really tolerate this volume for so long. You get very tired. So there are a lot of problems. I see the bike as a good solution to these issues.
K: It’s got such potential. More than half of the population living in and around Stockholm has less than a half-hour bike commute to their work. And there’s wonderful potential for transport there, when the weather allows it. When you start biking, then you realise what the environment is like and then you also have the will to change it. In the city hall they took the decision to change the commuting strategies from having the car on top, to putting the car on the bottom and having the pedestrian on top, and then the bicycle, and then every kind of bus or subway and every other kind of traffic needed to make the city run. But not private cars. But we haven’t seen a very good example of what this might look like yet, so that is still to be proven and seen in the planning departments. With the new Stockholm street is that actually a street, or is it a place? And that’s actually a very important question for everyone when we renovate and re-think our areas. You bring up the parking spaces issue. Farsta for instance, which has these beautiful buildings, but also these huge parking spaces. The inner part of Farsta is built quite densely, but in the parking areas it’s quite empty. So how do we change that into a housing situation? And what do we want? What are the streets supposed to look like? The streets when the car is not on top. How do we cross the street with a three-year old not driven by fear, but instead feeling that this is their space? This is a big change to make, and we have to live through that I think.
U: I think this could be explored more in the Stockholm area, both in the city of Stockholm and also in the areas around it. To make more cross-sectional connections, so not just connecting physical spaces but also connecting technical systems, connecting resources, connecting all kinds of systems. So for example, if we connect the technical systems for waste water, for organic waste management, you can connect the systems, find good ways of making use of waste water, such as by producing bio-gas. Another example is how you connect different kinds of traffic systems to each other. It should be easy to take the bike to the bus station, and the bus to the commuting train. They should all be connected into one structure. But you also have connections between nature and buildings. Nature can have practical consequences, for example green-roof buildings divert rainwater when you have excess rain, due to climate change or just nature itself. You can get new synergies. You have to think outside the box.
TS: So in terms of Stockholm and its population growth – on a very basic level, Stockholm is growing by around 30,000-40,000 people a year. What do you think are the best innovative solutions to increasing the housing capacity of the city? Do we need taller apartment buildings, do we need to utilise the suburbs more? What do you think are the best solutions?
K: We need an extremely large amount of new housing projects in Stockholm. I would say there is no single solution. We have to look at lots of different solutions and I think high-rise buildings is only one potential solution, a very small part of the whole solution. Actually connecting our city to itself, which is something we have already started with Hammary Sjöstad for instance, and using our industrial areas. That’s what we’re doing, and that’s where we feel we can plan the most apartments and housing projects.
U: Of course you need to build more housing in Stockholm, but you can also have social and economic measures. There are buildings and apartments which are actually empty in the city, and we can encourage more efficient use of existing buildings too. For instance, perhaps you could encourage people who live by themselves in a large house in the suburbs to exchange to a smaller apartment. Of course, there is a lot of friction with moving people around and it should be voluntary, but it could be stimulated.
A: The housing situation is a big issue, especially with the hyresrätt and the issue of how to solve that problem, because there are a lot of people with old contracts that don’t want to move, and we have a big problem because the price has changed so rapidly in the last few years. It’s a difficult subject and a difficult issue – how to motivate people to move. How would you do that? Do you have any suggestions?
U: No, I just identified a need. The practicalities of how to do it is a difficult political and social issue.
K: But building cheaper apartments for people who are not in the hyresrätt queue is important. If you are in the housing market, then you’re in. The problem is to get in, and there should be a much lower threshold to get there. That means we need smaller, cheaper apartments that are cheaper to build. We also know that we have a problem with student apartments, we need that to be solved too. And we need people who have no home to be able to have a home, and not just for six months but maybe for five years. So it’s really a question of lots of different solutions.
A: Another problem with the rent situation is that the demands on people are difficult to fulfil. As an artist, I cannot prove that I have a regular income and therefore cannot prove that I can pay for a flat, and therefore I cannot have a flat in Stockholm. It’s impossible, because there is no-one who will rent me one first-hand. So I have to look at second-hand, third-hand and fourth-hand, as I’m living now.
K: In Germany you have these Baugemeinschafts, where you make a small company together and you build your own house, and you build your own environments of interests together. And we’re very positive about that in Stockholm, but we have no tradition of it.
U: You could potentially start this system where people have self-built houses, but with professional guidance.
Come back tomorrow for part two of the discussion.
