The Stockholm Royal Seaport, located a 10-minute bicycle ride from the city centre, is set to become Sweden’s largest urban development, with 12,000 new homes and 35,000 workplaces. Until 2011, however, the area was home to a decrepit gasworks building and crumbling industrial sites.
As part of its urban planning, the City of Stockholm decided to redevelop the area to provide sustainable housing to current and future inhabitants. In addition to shutting down the gasworks, the city has been testing and treating the soil to remove the heavy metals and hazardous chemicals.
“We have been working with energy-efficient buildings and set high requirements on developers to produce buildings that use low energy,” says Steffan Lorentz, Head of Development for the Royal Seaport. “We also reuse the old buildings. We don't just tear them down to put up new ones… We try hard to think: what could these be used for?”
Researchers, innovators and the public sector have all been involved in projects to sustainably develop the area. Through greener construction practices, biogas production from food waste, electric car chargers, connection to a new tram line, a robust recycling system and more, the Seaport has undertaken various projects to meet its inhabitants’ long-term needs while protecting the environment.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, cities account for 60-80 per cent of energy consumption and 75 per cent of carbon emissions despite occupying just 3 per cent of the Earth’s land. Encouragingly, over 700 cities have joined the Race to Zero and committed to eliminating their emissions by 2050.
“One of the reasons that we… [are making] this environmentally friendly project is as a role model to see what things work… to have them implemented in other projects,” says Lorentz. “For instance, low energy houses are now being rolled out in all of our other projects in Stockholm.”
As it continues to develop, the Royal Seaport is also the ideal testbed for Stockholm’s ambition to be fossil-free and climate-positive by 2040.
On 2 and 3 June 2022, Stockholm will host Stocholm+50, an international meeting convened by the United Nations General Assembly that commemorates 50 years since the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, which made the environment a pressing global issue for the first time and led to the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
On 5 June 2022, the city will host World Environment Day, the biggest international day for the environment. Led by UNEP, the event will engage countries, businesses and millions of people from across the world to protect the planet. “Only One Earth” is the campaign slogan, with the focus on “Living Sustainably in Harmony with Nature”.
Follow the World Environment Day live feed for updates.
