‘Green’ Stockholm Hammarby Sea City gets 2015 completion date.
(Published: August 28, 2006, on Page 38)
A hitherto derelict neighbourhood in the back streets of the Swedish capital city of Stockholm is currently undergoing transformation to one of the “greenest” districts on earth, thanks to a combination of initiatives designed to conserve energy, recover resources and clean the environment.
The Hammarby Sjostad or “Hammarby Sea City,” as the development is christened, commenced in 1990 and will not be completed until 2015. Already, the project has recorded considerable progress and is home to about 10,000 people.
Upon ultimate development, the district will offer 10,000 apartments for over 20,000 inhabitants and a total of about 30,000 persons are expected to live and work there. Officials of the Stockholm City Development Administration told a team of journalists penultimate Friday in the Swedish capital that the hub, which used to be a shantytown, had been transformed to a “sustainable residential area”. They described it as the “biggest regeneration project in Stockholm.”
The media executives are members of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists, who visited the estate as part of the programmes of the 2006 IFEJ Congress that held from August 16 to 21.
The SCDA officials stated that, from day one, the organisation imposed tough environmental requirements on buildings, infrastructure solutions and the traffic environment. To attain these goals, they noted that integrated planning, innovative solutions and new techniques became a necessity.
It was gathered that the environmental and infrastructure planning of the estate was jointly developed by the Stockholm Water Company and the City of Stockholm Waste Management Authority. The initiative entailed an interaction between sewage and refuse processing and energy provision.
The area previously housed craftsmen’s workshop and small industries, which left behind a great deal of pollution, leaving the city’s Environment and Health Administration to clear and decontaminate the area.
Apart from the use of sustainable and eco-friendly construction materials, rainwater from the streets is collected, purified and then released into the nearby Lake Hammarby Sjo, rather than ending up in the sewer system and burdening the wastewater plant.
Via solar panels on some of the roofs, the light energy of the sun is harnessed into electric energy to light stairways and satisfy the inhabitants’ hot water requirements.
Additionally, biogas is produced in the estate’s waste treatment plant from the digestion of organic waste or sludge from wastewater. Most of the biogas is currently used as fuel in eco-friendly cars and buses.
In the estate, the heaviest and bulkiest waste fractions are sorted and collected via an underground waste collection system. The waste is sulked through pipes into a central room, one fraction at a time. The containers are collected from the room by refuse collection lorries, thereby reducing vehicle traffic in the area.