Stockholm

At Fisksätra, once Europe’s largest public housing project, Nils Tiberg, a resident narrates the social context around his allotment

Stockholm’s Million House programme was once the most ambitious public sector housing programme in the liberal democracies of western Europe – the so-called Swedish model. To visit now is to see how dramatically the Swedish model has changed. The housing stock is now largely in private corporate hands and it’s companies like Stena Fastigheter who now shoulder responsibility for mass housing. With the change of hands there is the devolution of responsibilities to the private sector and voluntary sector organisations. But this is not something that’s discernable from outer appearance at-least; the standards of maintenance of (former) public-sector owned housing is something that sink estates in the UK or France could well aspire to.

At Skarpnäck, Bagar-mossen and Fisksätra, community based organisations like Tillväxt show how approaches to management of landscapes in modernist housing have evolved along with the idea of how nature functions in the modern city: from old school simple ‘lawnifying’ of green spaces to complex amalgams that incorporate agroforestry, food growing, guerilla gardening and mapping.
The idea is to bring new forms of biodiversity, introduce different dimensions of the way gardens can ‘look and feel’ in the context of the high density 21st century housing. As the realities that underpin these urban spaces change so do the forms of social practice and belonging. A complex range of approaches all growing out of a blank canvas poetically starting with 3 strands of social engagement – Challenges, Possibilities, Active citizenship.