Hammarby Sjöstad: Not quite ‘twice as good’
Project Background / History
In the 1800s, the land south of Hammarby Lake, Stockholm was a popular vacation destination for locals in Sickla, the town southeast of Hammarby Sjöstad [1]. Up until the 1920s, this area–known as ‘Eastern Söder’s Pearl’–boasted ‘peaceful idyllic scenes from nature’ [1]. Just decades later, the construction of a highway connecting the area to the city filled the natural landscape with demolition debris, and various industrial companies and storage depots began taking root [1]. Where used to lie a former industrial brownfield site south of Hammarby Lake and the Stockholm city center, now stands the eco-city of Hammarby Sjöstad.
As the 2004 Olympic Games approached, Stockholm entered the bid to host and proposed a plan for Hammarby Sjöstad as the Olympic Village [2]. Environmental sustainability was to be the central focus of the new urban district, taking inspiration from the “UN Brundtland Report, Agenda 21, and the International Olympic Committee’s call for an environmental focus” [4]. The original Environmental Programme for Hammarby Sjöstad took after the Sydney 2000 Olympics, stating
The environmental performance of the city district should be twice as good as the state of the art technology available in the present day construction field… In order to achieve these goals, lifestyles need to be re-examined, new technological solutions developed, and a more holistic view of planning implemented. The city district is to be planned and built in accordance with the principles of the natural cycles and Hammarby Sjöstad is to serve as a spearhead for the movement towards ecological and environmentally friendly construction work and housing, and be at the forefront of international striving for sustainable development in densely populated urban areas [4].
The concept of being ‘twice as good’ became a crucial part of the Hammarby identity as the project progressed. Although the 2004 Olympics bid fell through, development and momentum for the project had already started in the early 1990s and the City of Stockholm had aspirations to clean up the site contamination by Hammarby Lake regardless. In a BBC News interview with Charlotta Baker, a Hammarby Sjöstad public outreach coordinator, the lake ‘had illegal businesses, an unsolved murder, drugs, illegal clubs’ and anything unwanted had been burnt or thrown in the sea [7]. This new plan for an ecodistrict would not only aim to revitalize the local economy, but also strive for the Environmental Programme emissions goal of “50% lower than the corresponding level for comparable housing areas from the early 1990s”–a goal publicized under the phrase ‘twice as good’ [4].
Twice as Good
The concept of being ‘twice as good’ is illustrated by the Hammarby Model, the conceptual closed-loop framework upon which Hammarby Sjöstad is designed. The Hammarby Model highlights a systems thinking approach that minimizes waste at all points of waste generation in the city by treating byproducts as potential for regeneration. The three main waste-to-energy streams are energy, waste and water.
Sustainability Successes /Innovation
Transportation |
A sustainability goal that Hammarby Sjöstad aims to achieve is reducing air pollution. In order to accomplish that goal, there is a push for minimizing private car usage and encouraging the community to utilize public transportation. Ferries, light rail links, and carpools that allow residents to travel throughout the neighborhood without having to drive personal vehicles. Another emphasis is expanding bicycle paths to help mitigate the increase in air pollution. The energy saving and attractive alternatives to private car usage helps with achieving the goal for at least 80% of residents and workers by commuting by public transportation, foot, or bicycle [1]. The alternative transportation system is designed to be convenient and easily accessible wherever an individual is located; the system not only runs throughout the city, but also travels to nearby cities of Hammarby Sjöstad. Both the ferry and the light rail link circulate throughout the city frequently providing easy access to fast and convenient modes of transportation. Both modes of transportation run 365 days a year from early in the morning to late at night. This schedule benefits workers that have daily commutes, because they no longer have to be concerned about parking, car traffic, and gas cost. Aside from ferries and light rail links, there are carpool cars that are clustered in groups of 25–35 according to demand during that particular time [1]. Households are encouraged to register for a carpool car as a way to opt-out of personal cars.
Hammarby Sjöstad, and Sweden in general also subsidizes their transportation to further encourage the usage of alternative modes of transportation. For example, the ferry runs year round from morning to night free of charge by the City of Stockholm. Subsidizing the resources provides an incentive for utilizing public transportation rather than private cars to help achieve their sustainability goals.
Sustainability Downfalls
Energy |
In spite of policy aiming for an energy efficiency of 60 kWh/m²/year, the City was the only entity consistently pushing for the goal, facing “difficulty in legitimizing and institutionalizing it” [5]. There was a lack of coordination between the Environmental Programme and architectural Quality Programme, allowing for conflicting interests and objectives to arise among developers, who were also concerned about the potential for economic loss in their investments [5]. Despite the intensive planning process that included many actors, they failed to “work towards a common vision or goal, share common risks, [and] agree about the division of responsibilities and implement organizational changes” [3].
Additionally, there is critique on this profit driven project that commodifies and commercializes the eco-city concept [6]. The Hammarby cooperative housing model allows developers to obtain “quick profits” and the heavy sustainability branding “seeks to market and export Swedish environmental technology” [6]. In a promotional document written by the Chairman of the GlashusEtt Steering Group, Lars Frânne states that the GlashusEtt “plays a very important role in exporting environmental technology… Sjöstaden is visited by over 10,000 industry representatives and decision makers every year” [1].
Solar panels |
A large part of the Hammarby identity is that many buildings in the city are powered in part by solar energy. GlashusEtt (Glasshouse) is an educational center at the heart of the ecocity that displays a solar panel system on its roof to advertise the city’s sustainability efforts. Despite the use of solar energy throughout the district, there has been critique about the way solar panels have been used in the design, especially due to the fact that the project missed its energy goal by 58 kWh/m2. The solar panels on residential building 1 face South, but as seen in the cases of residential building 2 and the GlashusEtt, the solar panels are placed on buildings that do not face the North / South cardinal directions; architects chose not to adjust the positioning of panels to face South due to administrative and aesthetic pressures. The project could have taken better steps in achieving its energy goal if solar panel placement were maximized to reach its potential.
Community |
As suggested by the Hammarby Model, energy is not an isolated function in the system. Although the Hammarby Model is fairly comprehensive in addressing most of the inputs in the city’s water, energy, and waste cycles, Hammarby has not been able to fully achieve its sustainability goals. The most notable unattained goal was energy usage–the city’s plan originally aimed to avoid surpassing energy usage of 60 kWh/m2. Instead, energy usage turned out to be 118 kWh/m2.
Failure to achieve these goals has primarily been attributed to the lack of community participation in and awareness of green initiatives–in both the Hammarby Model and the project’s design process. With a design framework that isolates sustainability from human influence, Hammarby has been set up to fall short of its energy goals. Josefin Wangel, an urban development researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, notes that “most residents are ‘upper middle class.’ It partly makes the area more homogenous and at a Stockholm-level it contributes to making the city more segregated” [7]. This homogeneity is linked to the issue of exclusivity in Hammarby, in terms of economic affordability–the cost of living in Hammarby is similar to inner city costs, which are higher than average [6]. The lack of diversity can be partly, if not largely, be attributed to the design’s oversimplification of city complexity and the exclusion of residents in the planning process [6]. Insufficient community development results in a “top-down approach to urban transition” in creating this new social order [5]. Ignoring community participation also impedes resident investment in overcoming different languages, and adopting different routines, norms, priorities and business cultures to reach Hammarby’s sustainability goals [3].
Hammarby Model |
A redesign of the Hammarby Model would acknowledge the importance of people and incorporate them into the closed-loop system–the community living in the city are the entire rationale for creating an ecocity to promote and prove the possibility of sustainable living. This redesign does not affect the technical aspects of Hammarby’s sustainable design and technology, but rather the way in which the human element is involved in bringing purpose to the design and technology.
Pre Habitation Community Outreach | Community development should start at the first stages of the design process by engaging surrounding Stockholm communities in order to not only create awareness about the project, but also frame the sustainability goals in a way that is accessible to more than the current demographic living in Hammarby–affluent, white residents. By holding events and design charrettes in surrounding areas catering to a variety of socio-economic factors, the Hammarby community can become a more diverse city made up of residents that are personally committed to sustainability. Additionally, these events provide opportunities for the design team to collect feedback from potential residents and gauge the necessary steps in order for sustainability technology to be effective.
Community Participation during Inhabitation | Engagement of residents should continue throughout the inhabitation of Hammarby; it should act as a “living document,” in that the Hammarby Model must be able to adapt its systems as it receives feedback from residents. For instance, in resident interviews, some people have expressed that composting systems are not distributed evenly throughout the city, leaving some residents without the option to compost. The Hammarby Model needs to internalize this feedback and address the issue in order to ensure that organic material is not landfilled, and is redirected into the closed-loop system to create opportunities for energy generation.
Is it ‘twice as good?’
Although the ‘twice as good’ goal was not entirely achieved, Hammarby Sjöstad has made great progress in exploring the implementation of sustainable development strategies, as highlighted in Figure 10. As can be expected from the absence of community development during the planning phase of the project, GlashusEtt cites the main challenge for the Environmental Programme as being “establishing contact with residents in order to encourage them to assist the Council in achieving environmental goals’’ [2]. The use of “on-site renewable technologies… was not in line with the preferences of the residents or with the interests of developers’’ [5]. The project’s strategic planner admits that “it remains a challenge to continue to innovate and design sustainability measures into the later phases of development” [2]. It is not simple to create changes once “the integrated socio-technical system has been stabilized and lock-in processes’’ are in place [3].
Even so, the project has achieved great success with the coordination of bringing the Master Plan to life with the collaboration between public and private sector, and the highly detailed subdistrict designs [2]. Hammarby Sjöstad serves as an ambitious benchmark for improvement and a cautionary tale that proves an “integrated and participatory planning framework” is integral to “sustainable urban transition” [5].
Sources
Fränne, Lars. “Hammarby Sjöstad — a unique environmental project in Stockholm.” GlashusEtt, 2007, http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph240/montgomery2/docs/HS_miljo_bok_eng_ny. pdf. [1]
“Hammarby Sjöstad.” Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, The National Archives, webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118150127/www.cabe.org.uk/case-studies/hammarby-sjostad. [2]
Iveroth, Sofie Pandis, et al. “Implications of Systems Integration at the Urban Level: the Case of Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm.” Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 48, June 2013, pp. 220–231., doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.09.012. [3]
Jernberg, Jonas, et al. “Hammarby Sjöstad: An Urban Development Case Study of Hammarby Sjöstad in Sweden, Stockholm.” China Development Bank Capital’s Green and Smart Urban Development Guidelines, Sweco, Oct 2015, https://hammarbysjostad20.se/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Hammarby-Sjostad_report_eng.pdf. [4]
Mahzouni, Arian. “The ‘Policy Mix’ for Sustainable Urban Transition: The city district of Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm”. Env. Pol. Gov., 25: 288–302, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1688. [5]
Saiu, Valeria. “The Three Pitfalls of Sustainable City: A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating the Theory-Practice Gap”. Sustainability 9, no. 12: 2311, 2007, https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/12/2311#framed_div_cited_count. Accessed 22 Oct 2020. [6]
Savage, Maddy. “The Swedish wasteland that’s now a sustainability star.” Business, BBC News, 2 Oct 2018. [7]