“Evolution of [Stockholm] Over the Last 100 Years”
Mats Pemer, director of Urban Planning at the Stockholm City Planning Administration, spoke at yesterday’s Micro/Macro seminar1 about the evolution of the city during the last century, and a little on the centuries between that and the first preserved mention of the city in 1252. My notes:
Old Town 1252 – first mention – ruled by German merchants – it grew.
Planned or unplanned? Not clear. Shows an early map/plan.
1600s – Fleming [Claes, 1592-1644] – planned Norrmalm – grid. The plan is “preserved”. Narrow streets. Slow growth until 1850 – industrial revolution.
Carl Lind… [hagen?] plan [in the 1850s] inspired by Paris, etc. [Baron Hausmann]
1910 industrial city 374 000 [inhabitants] – 1945 tram city 685 000 – People could build own homes, with the aid of the city [government] – very well-planned [“egnahem”] – 1960 metro city 808 000 – Garden City suburbs, although not exactly like English, less dense – 1975 metro city 665 000 !
1960 – city owns 70% of the land, border extended [as] city bought land [at the periphery]
Suburbs located along metro. [“Like pearls on a string.”]
1975 less [people], 150 [thousand] moved out of the city. “Miljonprogrammet” [when a million housing units were built in Sweden] – 100 [thousand] housing units built [in Stockholm]
Lot of empty flats – in the newest suburbs (Rinkeby, etc.) – Immigrants moved into [these] – segregation – The structure promotes this [segregation]
Corbusian “ideal plan for a Metro-served suburb” [Garden Cities, really] – [today] 10% in garden cities, one-family housing
Vällingby most famous [planned according to picture above] – ABC city “Arbete, Bostad, Centrum” [“work, residences, community center”] – Inspired by “New City” movement in Great Britain (“New Towns” [I believe]) – Not altogether successful, people work in the city, commute
Rinkeby structured to be easily built – square plan – because it was [the] cheapest – “Amazing urban area” [he said]
[Shows a diagram where the population decrease in the city after 1960 is plotted, alongside the rapid increase in the region as a whole; people moved out.]
New city plan 1999. Increasing car traffic. Trad [industry] moves out. IT + media grows, white collar work. No unused land left to develop.
Reuse already used land, increasing density. Respect tradition/character. Concentrate new developments to areas with good communication [to reduce congestion]
Old industrial areas – Lindhagen city – blocks, mixed-use, offices, shops, residences. Hammarby sjöstad – popular recreation area. Liljeholmen, very dense (will be), mixed-use.
1960 – get rid of housing – get new housing, now. [Shows] the houses on top of Debenhams. Over building highways, railways, Södra station (“suburb within the city” – criticism)
Kista Science City – mixed use. Use-zoned when it was built – now they are trying to mix them [the zones] up. Science Tower + projected Residential Tower.
20000 new housing units in the next 4 years [are planned].
Stockholm 2030 – goal: to be one of the most exciting cities in Europe [wow!]
Future: sustainable development, knit the urban pattern together again …
1 At the Museum of Architecture in Stockholm, subtitled “An urban meeting between Stockholm and Tokyo”; see also my previous notes from the lectures “Evolution of [Minato City] 1960’s to the Present Day” and “The Structure of Public Space and Everyday Life“