John Manoochehri är en av talarna nu på torsdag i seminariet “Den ekologiskt smarta staden är den täta staden”, kl 16-18. Här är hans tankar kring hållbara städer, kring den gamla svenska modellen och möjligheterna till en ny svensk modell.
The Swedish Model is Unwell
For a Brit/Anglophone, the whole idea of the ‘Swedish Model’ is inherently funny. Even policy-makers - who understand that it means essentially the nexus of (assumed) social welfare, urban and social planning, strong (i.e. big) government, stable industry and labour, equality, probably social democracy - find it funny. Think Austin Powers’ Bikini Team, think Victoria Silvstedt, and you have what Brits tend to have in mind, when they hear talk of ‘Svenska Modellen’.
And so, maybe a further pun is okay, from a Brit: it seems the Swedish Model is Unwell.
Some of this idea I either take on limited evidence (observing and reflecting on the change of government), some of this I take as given (if Åman says so, and Mayor Axén Olin comes to his conference, it can’t be far wrong), and some of this is simply by observation. Specifically on sustainability grounds.
Sustainability, by some reckonings, requires that within two generations (and most of the work within the generation now) aggregate resource consumption by human industrial systems is reduced by a factor of 10. That means a 90% reduction in overall resource consumption. Just imagine: out of every ten things you have or do or buy, only one being possible. The scale, complexity, speed of this change is almost inconceivable and almost too vast to contemplate. It would be entirely so were it not that the result of not achieving such radical reductions is literally too vast to contemplate, is genuinely inconceivable.
Sweden, by some reckonings, is pretty much the most environmental country in the world. Oil-free by 2020, powerful nature conservation base, comparatively high recycling, and so forth. But such reckonings are explicit about the fact that being more environmental than others does not mean becoming sustainable. In the world of the very very fat (more British perspective), the man that is still able to run at all is not thereby an Olympian.
Truth is, Sweden, sad to say is, very very fat, in terms of its use of natural resources. It is not a sustainability Olympian. The Swedish Model is Unwell.In the recent Yale Environmental Performance Index, Sweden ranks about top overall, but in energy efficiency comes in at number 48, two below the established ecopioneer….Congo. The overall statistics in the EPI are skewed by genuine achievements in terms of water and air quality - but deep down, Sweden is a deeply resource-greedy economy. (Even corrected for climate.)
In fact, the EPI arguably is itself highly distorted: it ranks achievement against governmental targets agreed, which are not themselves yet calibrated, in almost all instances, to the scale of the resource problem. Sweden is the least unwell of all nations! Fantastic.
Another index, taking absolute resource use more fully into account shows up quite how unwell Sweden is, in terms of sustainability: ranking it 119 out 178 global territories, beaten by Benin and Laos, and only just, with its decades of development and thousands of trained civil servants, above Kazakhstan. The Swedish Model is Very Unwell.
Focussing on cities, which in Sweden and increasingly around the world are the epicentres of human development, there is one dominant fact: cities are sinks for resources. Water, energy, resources, land, biota, minerals - cities are the chief resource-addicts, ably assisted by outlying industry which supplies the drugs. While this reflects the overall assumptions of the massive throughput-model of economic production-consumption driving industrial development, something of it can change, without necessarily radical political-economic realignment.
How? Essentially, that when cities are either designed or redeveloped, the resource consumption tendency is reversed, by two strategies: designing urban landscapes and infrastructure to be productive, and then designing them to be reproductive. Design cities, hat is, to produce as much of their energy, natural resources, even food, as is realistic - depending on size, climate, economy, etc - and design cities to re-use everything, again and again.
Färgfabriken’s unifying principle of ‘recycling’ is big step towards these realities. My proposal, Lövhomen Sustainability PDF, to support their concept design for Lövholmen, has been to systematise the sustainability design principles that need to underpin this kind of work, and to simplify and thematise the redevelopment into three principles: Parks, Nets, Knowledge. Parks are the productive areas; Networks are the reproductive, cycling, systems; and Knowledge is the juice that drives the system forward. Further analysis suggest how to tackle the cost problem, and how to ensure sustainability synergises with other goals for the city, including economic incubation and social integration.
Urban planners and designers, development corporations, city governments, engineers, architects - the expertise block responsible for urban development - tend to look at the idea of ‘productive’ and ‘reproductive’ cities, and roll their eyes: Cost. Practicality. Risk. Speed. For sure, there are major engineering and design challenges involved in creating cities which ‘tread lightly’ on the earth. But the global environment is forcing a mirror in front of the eyes of the Swedish Model, and far from seeing sleek and sexy curves, taught muscles, and rosy cheeks, what nature’s mirror seems to be reflecting is a resource-fat lazy-bones.
Can the Swedish Model get into shape? In fact, much of the necessary transition to massive resource efficiency has, in separate pieces, been pioneered already. Above all, a focus on efficiency can create significant cost reductions, either over the city’s lifetime, or even at capital outlay. Just ask Arup about it all. They are planning to become the world’s eco-engineering specialists: their Dongtan eco-city, for 11,000 people outside Shanghai, will sort out their own food, water and energy, and recycle everything.
Whether that is truly sustainable remains to be seen, but what is clear is that they are setting a serious pace for others to follow. The Swedish urban development model may not be able to slip into a bikini any time soon, but if China is now setting out to be the world leader in reducing the resource consumption of cities, and Sweden is already behind Namibia in sustainability terms, maybe it’s time to get into training? Lövholmen seems a convenient urban-design-gym - and the clock is ticking.