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| Hammarby Sjostad, a once-industrial neighborhood of Stockholm, is now the site of energy-efficient housing and popular cultural destinations. Linus Sundahl-Djerf for The New York Times till bildtext |
The waterfront district of Hammarby Sjostad, on the southern edge of Stockholm , has been heralded as a model of sustainable urban development, a place where one can already glimpse the future of city living. And the area’s growth, coupled with the steadily rising popularity of the island of Sodermalm to its immediate north, is pulling the inhabitable boundaries — if not the heart — of Stockholm southward.
Located along the Hammarby waterway, this newly built, eco-conscious neighborhood had previously been home to landfills and industry, dense with factories and office buildings. But then a plan was conceived to build housing for athletes as part of an ultimately unsuccessful Olympic bid in the 1990s, and the area was soon transforming.
“We had started this with great ambitions, and we just kept going with the project,” said Martin Skillback, the project manager for the city’s development administration office, of the planned residential district.
Today, about 10,000 apartments have been built, and over 30,000 Stockholmers will call Hammarby Sjostad home by the project’s estimated completion date, in about five years. Thanks to bike lanes and convenient ferry, bus and tram links, 80 percent of residents commute without the use of cars, a figure that’s slightly higher than average in a city already full of energy-efficient construction.
