Iceland was a blast, quite literally sometimes as it was often very windy. But it was time to move onwards so off we went to Stockholm, Sweden! Once we arrived in the city centre, I was blown away by sheer size and amazing architecture of the old buildings. We found out later that people in Stockholm consider it a “small city”, even though there almost 1 million inhabitants, not counting the surrounding area.

And then once we arrived at our hotel, I was even more impressed as we were staying on an old ship!

We spent the next few days sleeping on this wonderful ship at night and then exploring the city during the day or participating in planned activities. One such planned activity was to visit Trädgård på Spåret which literally means, “garden on tracks”. This was essentially a community garden that popped up once visiting Germans saw the abandoned railway and decided they would like to make a social green space. The idea took off from there and now it’s a vibrant community gathering place where locals come to learn how to garden, get in touch with nature, socialize with friends and even drink wine as one lovely local lady explained to me! Some takeaways from this initiative include:

• make it about sharing. Share the knowledge, share the how-to, share the tools, share the food.
• do it well and people will hear and come to you.
• having a PR person as one of your founding members definitely isn’t a bad thing

Close to the community garden was a traditional Swedish garden which consisted of mini-homes and beautiful gardens. I loved this space and while it’s not very functional for many in Stockholm as there is a 10+ waiting year list, I believe a modified version could be successfully created in the CRD as an answer for sustainable housing and/or low-income housing.

Moving on from the gardens, we took a look at two sustainable redevelopment projects in Stockholm. These were Hammarby Sjöstad and Royal Seaport. Hammarby was the older of the two and it included (but is not limited to) features such as reclaimed water, solar, car sharing, electric car charging slots, public spaces, strong recycling and waste programs, well connected active and public transporation routes and biogas. Royal Seaport was a newer development and had all of the same with more green spaces, community garden and more. Royal Seaport developers learned from Hammarby that they needed to improve upon 2 main things and these were:

1. Make clear, measurable goals with a detailed step by step plan for each goal
2. Engage the public before beginning construction

Some of the key takeaways from these two developments were:

• making active and public transport easier and cheaper than alternatives (i.e. driving) will improve their numbers (i.e. add trams, buses, bike lanes, metro lines, add congestion tax like Stockholm did, make certain areas pedestrian only).
• make parking lots into parks
• waste nothing – use waste as energy (i.e. biogas)

After a bit more exploring of Stockholm, we took the train to Lund, Sweden, a university town near Malmo, one of the world leaders in sustainability. A town that was once an industrial town that evolved into a sustainable city through effective progressive top down management.

We only had a brief time in Malmo, but we took advantage of it. We had a great morning session at City Hall with their IT Department and Sustainability Strategists who walked us through their Comprehensive Master Plan and ingenious mapping techniques (including 3D)!

Some fun facts from this session would be:

• Malmo’s municipalities are all centralized to one Planning Department, rather than all of them having their own
• 200 of the city’s buses run on biogas
• 500kms of bike lanes stretch across the city with various pedestrian only spaces

Once we finished at the City Hall, we took a tour with two different guides. One who helps run an outdoor educational program for kids and then another with a planner for the Western Harbour Redevelopment Project – home to the famous Turning Torso building.

Western Harbour is considered a leader in sustainable development and it was easy to see why, but it also still had its drawbacks. A quick list of some of the pros and cons are below:

Pros:

• walkable
• bikeable
• close to public transport
• reclaimed water
• solar
• biogas
• wind power
• active waterfront community gathering place (not intended)
• car sharing (powered by solar)
• each house is unique and set up as an old European city with nooks and crannies everywhere

Cons:

• Aimed at the wrong demographic (aimed at older folks so had to scramble to build schools as it is now a family orientated zone, just like many of the projects we’ve seen)
• still some social problems in other areas (i.e. low-income folks)
• lack of large open green playing space for recreation and socializing (a must for me with my soccer and frisbee background)

The city also believed in the policy of making things easy to do and people would do it, (i.e biking and bike infrastructure) but also have some programs such as a bike counter to motivate people a little more.

I could go on and on about the sustainability aspects of Malmo, but I’m going to stop it here because I imagine you’re getting tired of reading all this as I am tired writing this. Although that could be because it’s nearly 1am here in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I will quickly mention that on our day off in Lund we went for a quick ride around the city on bikes and played around with my GoPro and stumbled across a Quidditch game!

 

I also got asked to join in on a Swedish bachelor party as we were walking across a town square at one point. The boys needed a contestant to compete against the groom by building any 4 legged animal out of nails and ductape, except I had the tape and the groom only had string. It was a great time and at the end I was awarded a beer or a hug from the groom and if you know me at all, then you know I obviously went for the hug.

With that quick recap, I shall call it a night. But for now, I will leave you with a reminder about one of the key lessons that we’ve been exposed to over and over again and how you can apply it to any aspect of your life. If you want to improve active participation rates, make it easier (and cheaper to do). This applies to sustainability, and active and public transportation, but it can also be applied to things such as eating healthy. It’s hard to eat healthy when you have a big tin can of cookies waiting for you in the cupboard. Make it easy and take them away. Can’t go for a run? Make it easy and put on your shorts and shoes and step outside – you’re halfway there already. So simply make it easy.