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This is an interesting article to me, and fairly near to my heart--I'm the founder of a small "remote-enabled" startup based in Washington State that moved to K

This is an interesting article to me, and fairly near to my heart--I'm the founder of a small "remote-enabled" startup based in Washington State that moved to Kiruna for a year. I'm 6 months into the trip now, typing this within site of the mine in question. The interesting part of this article to me was the part that discussed the anthropologist's findings, towards the end of the article. It confirms what I've seen anecdotally as well--the men are mostly ambivalent, some slightly optimistic, and the women are slightly anxious. It's a big project, but the timeframe of multiple years greatly reduces the stress on people. The businesses are changing plans slowly to accommodate, as are government offices and government-owned housing authorities, but there is no rush. I've already seen a bit of the effect on my emotions--the first time I traveled here, I got on and off at the old train station, which is now on its way to demolition. Physical places that hold memories are for me a sort of safety, and seeing them go is slightly painful. It would be hard, I imagine, to watch my parent's home be destroyed. Overall, the move makes me confident of mankind's ability to cope with climate change. Kiruna is only a small town, and it's moving only a short ways away, but it is a massive undertaking that requires a lot of money and (perhaps more difficultly) a lot of cooperation. If Kiruna can do it, larger towns can too, at least when faced with an obvious existential threat.

glesica 12y ago
Off topic, but I would be interested to hear more about how and why you ended up temporarily moving to Kiruna. Seems pretty random. But, as someone currently participating in Startup Chile, the idea of picking up and moving around the world with your business is pretty interesting.
- tarsius_tarsier 12y ago
  Did you say Chile? well, a few years ago my entire city moved 10feet away in 4 minutes. That was an interesting experience too. http://www.wired.com/2010/03/chile-earthquake-moved-entire-city-10-feet-to-the-west/ http://www.wired.com/2010/03/chile-earthquake-moved-entire-c...
- michaelleland 12y ago
  >> how I own Silvertrek Systems, which is a technology-oriented bookkeeping business, basically. We've been remote for a while, with one employee in Alaska and one in Minneapolis, and the rest of us in "World Headquarters" in Battle Ground, WA, a suburb of Portland OR. We have a fairly strict meeting once a week, (one hour, same time every week, all hands on deck) but other than that people work when they want to, with the requirement that there's at least a 4 hour overlap with the people they work with. I work M-Th from 1pm to midnight to make this happen. Skype, Google Hangouts, Basecamp, AWS Windows Server, Freshdesk, T-mobile's awesome international service, and a few other tools make it possible. >> Why Quite simply, we wanted to experience living abroad. My mom was born in Sweden, and my wife is a double citizen, (although born and raised in the US). We've always spoken Swedish to our children, and we wanted to get a good base for them. It's so much easier for them to get a grasp of a second language when they're young. My wife's sister lives in Kiruna, so that's where we landed, in Artic, with Northern Lights dancing overhead during the months that we aren't listening to birds chirping under the midnight sun.
  - glesica 12y ago
    That sounds like a great experience, good luck!
  - davidw 12y ago
    Very inspiring story, both personally and in terms of the business. Congratulations!
notahacker 12y ago
I can understand a timescale measured in years is less stressful than one measured in months, but it sounds almost as if they're going to the opposite extreme and inducing stress by leaving people for decades in a condemned and depopulating environment. A move that's first announced in 2004, doesn't actually start until 2018 and should be almost completed in 2050, according to the article, sounds painfully slow.
- rgbrenner 12y ago
  "condemned and depopulated" That sounds like the opposite of the plan in the article: When trying to imagine how Kiruna’s move will work, it helps to think of a glacier edging slowly down a valley. The ground covered in a century will be remarkable, but the place won’t change that radically from day to day. The relocation and redevelopment will be a gradual process occurring over several generations. A central tenet of the plan is that all development will be contagious; the new will be built on the edge of the old to prevent the appearance of a break in the city’s whole. “One key strategy is leaving no one behind,” Lindstedt says. “The city needs to connect all current residents during the whole relocation process, rather than creating a new satellite. New parts of the city are placed far enough away from the iron ore extraction to reassure residents long-term, but it has to be close enough to the existing parts to keep the community together.”
- michaelleland 12y ago
  >> by leaving people for decades in a condemned and depopulating environment This isn't really happening--people have choices of where to live, and they can move if they want to. It isn't as easy as say living in Stockholm to relocate, but it's not like they're stuck. And the it's not depopulating, either, they're just moving a coupla kilometers down the road. >> painfully slow Ha! I sometimes feel that way too, but it doesn't really need to move faster because of the location of the iron ore under the city, and I think it makes sense to move slowly in this sort of situation. It would be a good reaction to a slow rise in sea level, too. If you give people early warning, and a long time-horizon, property values will slowly go down by the coast, and people will slowly move.

glesica 12y ago

Off topic, but I would be interested to hear more about how and why you ended up temporarily moving to Kiruna. Seems pretty random. But, as someone currently participating in Startup Chile, the idea of picking up and moving around the world with your business is pretty interesting.

tarsius_tarsier 12y ago
Did you say Chile? well, a few years ago my entire city moved 10feet away in 4 minutes. That was an interesting experience too. http://www.wired.com/2010/03/chile-earthquake-moved-entire-city-10-feet-to-the-west/ http://www.wired.com/2010/03/chile-earthquake-moved-entire-c...
michaelleland 12y ago
>> how I own Silvertrek Systems, which is a technology-oriented bookkeeping business, basically. We've been remote for a while, with one employee in Alaska and one in Minneapolis, and the rest of us in "World Headquarters" in Battle Ground, WA, a suburb of Portland OR. We have a fairly strict meeting once a week, (one hour, same time every week, all hands on deck) but other than that people work when they want to, with the requirement that there's at least a 4 hour overlap with the people they work with. I work M-Th from 1pm to midnight to make this happen. Skype, Google Hangouts, Basecamp, AWS Windows Server, Freshdesk, T-mobile's awesome international service, and a few other tools make it possible. >> Why Quite simply, we wanted to experience living abroad. My mom was born in Sweden, and my wife is a double citizen, (although born and raised in the US). We've always spoken Swedish to our children, and we wanted to get a good base for them. It's so much easier for them to get a grasp of a second language when they're young. My wife's sister lives in Kiruna, so that's where we landed, in Artic, with Northern Lights dancing overhead during the months that we aren't listening to birds chirping under the midnight sun.
- glesica 12y ago
  That sounds like a great experience, good luck!
- davidw 12y ago
  Very inspiring story, both personally and in terms of the business. Congratulations!

notahacker 12y ago

I can understand a timescale measured in years is less stressful than one measured in months, but it sounds almost as if they're going to the opposite extreme and inducing stress by leaving people for decades in a condemned and depopulating environment. A move that's first announced in 2004, doesn't actually start until 2018 and should be almost completed in 2050, according to the article, sounds painfully slow.

rgbrenner 12y ago
"condemned and depopulated" That sounds like the opposite of the plan in the article: When trying to imagine how Kiruna’s move will work, it helps to think of a glacier edging slowly down a valley. The ground covered in a century will be remarkable, but the place won’t change that radically from day to day. The relocation and redevelopment will be a gradual process occurring over several generations. A central tenet of the plan is that all development will be contagious; the new will be built on the edge of the old to prevent the appearance of a break in the city’s whole. “One key strategy is leaving no one behind,” Lindstedt says. “The city needs to connect all current residents during the whole relocation process, rather than creating a new satellite. New parts of the city are placed far enough away from the iron ore extraction to reassure residents long-term, but it has to be close enough to the existing parts to keep the community together.”
michaelleland 12y ago
>> by leaving people for decades in a condemned and depopulating environment This isn't really happening--people have choices of where to live, and they can move if they want to. It isn't as easy as say living in Stockholm to relocate, but it's not like they're stuck. And the it's not depopulating, either, they're just moving a coupla kilometers down the road. >> painfully slow Ha! I sometimes feel that way too, but it doesn't really need to move faster because of the location of the iron ore under the city, and I think it makes sense to move slowly in this sort of situation. It would be a good reaction to a slow rise in sea level, too. If you give people early warning, and a long time-horizon, property values will slowly go down by the coast, and people will slowly move.