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Sweden’s city model hardly represents the ideal: the 1960s thru 1980s intentionally ripped the public center out of almost all Swedish towns, discouraging outsi

Sweden’s city model hardly represents the ideal: the 1960s thru 1980s intentionally ripped the public center out of almost all Swedish towns, discouraging outside public space and attempting to make city and town centers into purely work and centralized (mostly indoor) retail spaces, with large (often multi-storey) parking spaces to enable easy car-transport to and from the suburbs (where people were supposed to live). Take a look at the center of Stockholm: the area past the old town connecting the southern, central and western islands (Söder, Norrmalm/City, Kungsholmen) is a horrific spaghetti of motorways leading right into the heart of town - impossible to navigate on foot (pedestrians are led under overpasses, through tunnels, up and down litter-strewn stairways, and past 'unofficial’ toilets. It’s a truly dystopian vision of what can happen to a town when city-planners decide that cities are not for living in, and only local activism and historical accident preserved the parts of the old town that tourists now think are so beautiful and charming. Nowadays things are improving, but the center of the city itself is still largely pedestrian and cycle-unfriendly, and many central streets have no doors, windows or stores facing the street itself: the idea was to keep the sidewalks free from people loitering or strolling around. If you want a human-scaled model of a city that’s built to encourage public space, walking and meeting, then almost any southern European town that’s built to radiate from a central (traffic-free) square, ringed by restaurants and cafés, is a better example than anywhere in Sweden.

ptr 9y ago
This comment makes me wonder if we’ve been to the same city, a horrific spaghetti of motorways? “Truly dystopian”? And which city planners are you talking about, Fleming in the 1600s or Lindhagen in the 1800s? The problem with Stockholm is that it is situated on a bunch of islands, making bridges and tunnels necessary.
- kryptiskt 9y ago
  Obviously the city planners of the 20th century.
- null_object 9y ago
  I don't want to get sidetracked into our subjective impressions of Stockholm, but for the record, I live and work in the center of the town, and my preferred means of getting around would ideally be cycling and walking - neither of which are directly encouraged by the fact that during the 1960s to the 1980s large areas of the center were demolished and replaced by an extensive network of motorways and wide feeder roads directly into the city center. If you take a look at the google maps link [1] you can see the central train station over the horizon of multi-lane motorways, and looking around the panorama you should be able to get an impression of the massive network built for cars around the entire central area. These roads don't connect the 'bunch of islands' (which are all linked by quite short bridges) they were intended to transport people living in the suburbs to their jobs in an otherwise uninhabited town, and back again in the evening, travelling by car. Trying to cross this network from the city-center to the neighboring island (Kungsholmen) involves the sort of dystopian walk I described above. Naturally there are other ways to get from one island to the other that circumvent this mammoth road network. The center of Stockholm was viewed as unmodern and slum-like in the 1960s, and the planners at that time intended to completely remove all of the buildings and streets that you refer to: they were prevented from totally razing the Old Town (Gamla Stan) by local activists and protests, but large areas of the City were demolished and replaced by faceless office-space, with no entrances, shops, cafés or any features that would encourage people to do anything than walk or drive past as fast as possible on their way elsewhere. These streets [2] have only begun to be 'humanized' in recent years, now that planners have seen the error of attempting to empty the city-center of all people before and after work hours - and now the process of establishing restaurants, hotels, cafés, shops and other lively street activities is really in full swing, with construction across almost all the streets listed in the note below. But the attitude that car-traffic comes first is hard to shake for a generation of planners brought up with the feeling that masses of cars is a sign of a 'big city' and of 'city pulse' (stadspuls), so cycle lanes are generally rubbish [3] and pedestrians' needs are generally subsumed under the requirement to keep car-traffic moving (framkomlighet). Although much lip-service is now paid to cycling and walking in towns, very little is done outside of the tourist-visible areas in the center. [1] https://goo.gl/4sWntM https://goo.gl/4sWntM [2] For example: Vattugatan, Malmskillnadsgatan, Herkulesgatan, Mäster Samuelsgatan [3] https://goo.gl/JfWRtU https://goo.gl/JfWRtU

ptr 9y ago

This comment makes me wonder if we’ve been to the same city, a horrific spaghetti of motorways? “Truly dystopian”? And which city planners are you talking about, Fleming in the 1600s or Lindhagen in the 1800s? The problem with Stockholm is that it is situated on a bunch of islands, making bridges and tunnels necessary.

kryptiskt 9y ago
Obviously the city planners of the 20th century.
null_object 9y ago
I don't want to get sidetracked into our subjective impressions of Stockholm, but for the record, I live and work in the center of the town, and my preferred means of getting around would ideally be cycling and walking - neither of which are directly encouraged by the fact that during the 1960s to the 1980s large areas of the center were demolished and replaced by an extensive network of motorways and wide feeder roads directly into the city center. If you take a look at the google maps link [1] you can see the central train station over the horizon of multi-lane motorways, and looking around the panorama you should be able to get an impression of the massive network built for cars around the entire central area. These roads don't connect the 'bunch of islands' (which are all linked by quite short bridges) they were intended to transport people living in the suburbs to their jobs in an otherwise uninhabited town, and back again in the evening, travelling by car. Trying to cross this network from the city-center to the neighboring island (Kungsholmen) involves the sort of dystopian walk I described above. Naturally there are other ways to get from one island to the other that circumvent this mammoth road network. The center of Stockholm was viewed as unmodern and slum-like in the 1960s, and the planners at that time intended to completely remove all of the buildings and streets that you refer to: they were prevented from totally razing the Old Town (Gamla Stan) by local activists and protests, but large areas of the City were demolished and replaced by faceless office-space, with no entrances, shops, cafés or any features that would encourage people to do anything than walk or drive past as fast as possible on their way elsewhere. These streets [2] have only begun to be 'humanized' in recent years, now that planners have seen the error of attempting to empty the city-center of all people before and after work hours - and now the process of establishing restaurants, hotels, cafés, shops and other lively street activities is really in full swing, with construction across almost all the streets listed in the note below. But the attitude that car-traffic comes first is hard to shake for a generation of planners brought up with the feeling that masses of cars is a sign of a 'big city' and of 'city pulse' (stadspuls), so cycle lanes are generally rubbish [3] and pedestrians' needs are generally subsumed under the requirement to keep car-traffic moving (framkomlighet). Although much lip-service is now paid to cycling and walking in towns, very little is done outside of the tourist-visible areas in the center. [1] https://goo.gl/4sWntM https://goo.gl/4sWntM [2] For example: Vattugatan, Malmskillnadsgatan, Herkulesgatan, Mäster Samuelsgatan [3] https://goo.gl/JfWRtU https://goo.gl/JfWRtU