GrowSmarter and The Royal Seaport create affordable and sustainable communities, allowing residents to participate in the sustainable urban lifestyle.
One fact about sustainability and environmental justice that is hard to avoid is that innovative, sustainable ways of living are often reserved for those with higher levels of income. In Stockholm, projects such as GrowSmarter and the Royal Seaport are introducing sustainable living options for the middle class.
GrowSmarter is a project within a couple of buildings in Stockholm where the insides of old apartment buildings were remodeled to enhance sustainable living. I really liked this project because it seemed like a testing ground for new sustainable technologies that could later be implemented in thousands of other apartment buildings. The most noticeable feature was the tablet-controlled electricity. Managing heating, cooling, and lighting from one location allows residents to more concisely manage how they use electricity. This is aided by charts and summaries produced by the tablet that allow residents to track their overall energy use. Furthermore, a setting on the tablet allows residents to turn off all unnecessary electricity, such as lights and heat, when leaving the house by clicking just one button, making it easy to remember to turn everything off.
An innovation used at GrowSmarter that I found really interesting was their cooling system, which uses cold water pushed through pipes to cool off the residences. I think that this is very important technology because air conditioning units must release heat out into the air in the process of cooling down a home or apartment, creating an overall warming effect. It is exciting that new technologies are being developed to mitigate this problem. I wonder if this technology could be applicable in other cities that experience hotter summers than Stockholm.
The most exciting piece of this initiative was that it is affordable. The GrowSmarter buildings are in a less central but growing part of Stockholm, not far from a metro stop. Since Stockholm's government prices apartments based on size and location, sustainability is not a factor in the rent for the residents in these buildings, meaning that these technologically-advanced apartments are not more expensive than apartments in neighboring buildings. Since this building is in a more middle-class area, it enables people other than the super-wealthy to participate in sustainable living, allowing them to meet their moral aspirations without breaking the bank.
The Royal Seaport in Stockholm works off of a similar idea: creating sustainable apartments for middle-class individuals. This area is different than GrowSmarter in that it is an entire community of apartment buildings, parks, and shops that together form an ultra-sustainable community within Stockholm.
An interesting piece of this project was its relationship with fossil fuels, as two large old oil storage facilities sit in the middle of the development. These gorgeous round buildings are out of use, but will be remodeled as a hotel and theater. The area's history with oil and natural gas has led to water contamination, which the architects of the Royal Seaport are dealing with in a super interesting way. Oil-eating bacteria are released into the water, purifying resource of its dirty history. When the bacteria are finished, they eat each other, leaving the water completely uncontaminated.
Furthermore, this neighborhood plans to be fossil fuel free by 2030, a more ambitious take on Stockholm's goal of being fossil fuel free by 2040. The quick turnaround of this area being a place for oil and now being so quick to eliminate the harmful liquid is inspirational. Ambitious cities in the United States could certainly learn from this project and create affordable, sustainable neighborhoods, no matter the area's past.