I’ve always been intrigued by the Swedish community of Vällingby, just outside of Stockholm:
Vällingby was planned in the early 1950s as a new town. Following its inauguration in 1954, it soon became world famous as a unique, well-planned city district served by the Stockholm Metro and a symbol of the Swedish middle-way — a suburb designed to offer its residents everything they needed, in short an independent city.
Well-planned, yes, but suffocating. And not entirely successful. Though planned with 10,000 jobs, residents used it as a dormitory suburb and travelled on the metro to jobs elsewhere, confounding the planners’ desire for that elusive work-housing balance.
Still, it had a big impact, particularly on English and, I suspect, Canadian planners. Indeed, though I’ve never seen it documented, I have a feeling that the idea of regional town centres, joined by rapid-transit – which still remains a founding principle of our Metro Vancouver plans – was inspired by this Swedish precedent. In other words, Metrotown is our Vällingby.
Don Buchanan sends some news:
Fifty years after the opening of Vällingby, Sweden’s world famous New Town from 1954, works began with its resurrection. … other developments gradually drained the neighbourhood unit. Less people made life difficult for the little cinema, as well as for the shops. Vällingby was in need of new blood, and the pièce de résistance of the renewal would be a new department store.
And here it is:
Red as a lacquer box, the construction stands as a precious object by the new entrance of the centre. With layers on layers, a sense of depth is transmitted in the façade. The milky glass gets increasingly see-through as the white dots vanish towards top and exposes the red skin behind. A cool and thin cloth on a warm body.
Sigh. Why do some people seem to think that a town can be “fixed” by plopping a piece of modernist claptrap down in the middle of town? The problem of the success or failure of cities is so much more complicated than that.