Best Practice

Introduction

Stockholm Royal Seaport is one of the largest urban development areas in northen Europe with 12,000 new homes and 35,000 workplaces. Planning work started in the early 2000s and the new city district will be fully developed around 2030.The area runs along the waterline of the Baltic Sea, lies next door to the Royal National City Park and is just ten minutes away from central Stockholm by bicycle. The industrial site around the gasworks areawill be transformed into an urban district that interacts with port operations and the existing residential areas.The Stockholm Royal Seaport area will feature the characteristics and density of an inner-city neighbourhood, with a broad mix of homes, amenities and businesses, as well as strategic infrastructure and international port traffic.

Stockholm Royal Seaport: towards a smart port city model

Reason to Be Selected

In competition with other urban development projects around the world, Stockholm and Stockholm Royal Seaport received an award for best sustainable urban development project in the category Sustainable Communities. The award was presented at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris 2015 by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a network connecting more than 80 of the world’s megacities. The award is proof that Stockholm is an international leader in sustainable urban development.

Highlights:

Stockholm Royal Seaport will be a living and integrated city district, built with the human scale in mind. The development will connect the northern and southern part of the Royal National Park and contribute to the area’s biological diversity. Other co-benefits include: cost savings due to lower resource use (energy, transport, waste) over the long term; green growth by creating green jobs in the clean tech sector; a stronger community through the creation of networks, project groups and residents association; and the proximity to and availability of green structures.

Details

In 2009, the City Council of Stockholm decided that the Stockholm Royal Seaport should become a new environmentally profiled district. The aim of the project is to transform the old industrial port area into a modern city environment for both residents and businesses. Close cooperation between public authorities, developers, industry and universities, resulted in six focus areas, including energy, transportation, climate adaptation, eco-cycle systems, and sustainable housing.

The city, building off of the success of the Hammarby Sjostad project, set out aggressive goals for SRS, including:

1) Reducing carbon dioxide emissions to less than 1.5 tonnes per person by 2020;

2) Having a fossil fuel-free city district by 2030;

3) Creating a climate-adapted district to mitigate the impacts of rising temperatures and sea levels.

Conclusions

The Stockholm Royal Seaport (SRS) project is transforming the old industrial port area into a modern city environment for both residents and businesses, setting the standard for creating a fossil-fuel free Stockholm. The project will improve the city’s sustainability by providing 12,000 apartments and 35,000 work places, which will be combined with space for recreation, thereby creating a dynamic and vibrant living and working space.