Urban Sustainability in Hammarby
Hammarby Sjöstad an early sustainable city development in Stockholm Sweden 
Hammarby from the air
Overview
I visited the area of Hammarby in September of 2011 and was really impressed by the attempt to build an urban eco-development that addressed every aspect of living sustainably. An urban neighbourhood that was both sustainable and whose model could be replicated and improved on as technology developed.
I also came away with a feeling that it had a sense of place, of community but was perhaps the positive impression of a tourist rather than the hard won realism of a local.
While the buildings are mostly not that interesting the landscaping, particularly the integrated public water management made at the time a real impression.
In 2010 there were other more hyped eco-cities being talked about in the Architectural press like Masdar City in the UAE or Dongtan in China.1 But both these projects fizzled out in the real world to be replaced by the next White Elephant in the queue the current one at the time of writing being The Line. I posted about it at the time and now almost 15 years later I thought to take the time to look again at the development now that some time has passed.
Urban Plan of Hammerby © Stockholm City Planning Administration
Hammarby started out as a redevelopment of an old, and much contaminated industrial area, part of Stockholm’s 2004 Olympic bid and meant to be a sustainable athletes village. They lost the Olympics to Athens but development of Hammarby continued and it became a model for other ecological developments over the world. The basic framework behind the development is the so called Hammarby Model that can be seen in the image below. Basic outline and masterplan was by Stockholm City Panning Department lead by Jan Inghe-Hagström.
The Hammarby Model - Integral energy, waste and water system © Bumpling AB
Simplified a bit you could think of it like three interconnected rings representing waste, water and energy. Unlike with standard services in a normal city in which these rings are separate in Hammarby these resources are used to support each other.
Thus combustible waste from the area is incinerated to produce both electricity and district heating. Treated waste water is fed back into the district heating system too before being returned to the sea. Waste energy from one process is utilised in another and thus efficiency of all the rings is maximised.
Solar power and grass roofs are being used in a few buildings too but it’s not a development covered in them. It’s about using appropriate technologies and solutions to minimise consumption as well as provide more environmentally friendly services. The Architecture is mostly nothing that special, or different from a standard Scandinavian development. In fact I think one of the best things to take away from Hammarby is that the modern housing blocks that predominate in Sweden and Finland don’t need to change much to be a lot more ecological.
Lessons learnt are being fed back to the last phase of Hammarby and in other developments in Sweden. It’s a set of solutions to sustainable living which have been built in a way that they can be added to and expanded over time. There are no fancy tricks like Masdar’s proposed bubble cars that you can’t change the destination of during your journey on route or overarching management systems like the unbuilt Dongtan.
Housing Typologies
Hammarby Sjostad Case Study | CP 249 Urban Design in Planning 2007
While the Architecture as I said is not the interesting thing here it’s worth taking a little closer look at the planning of the development and what urabn typogrophies were used.
Plan shows ‘broken’ block typology
The block design or ‘old suburbs’ in the image above I think is more appropriately called urban block developments such as were usual in European cities from 17th C onwards to the 20th. This is what they used in Hammarby which is really the typology of Stockholm center extended a closed order typology. A little twist was they used a broken form of this ie allow views and access to the inner courtyard which in turn allowed more light and views in. Most of the parking is in buried basement levels
From what I can find apartment blocks are point access which is also typical of Stockholm. A couple of examples show the apartment layouts. Below is one from among the earlier developments.
Point access apartment block images come from Case Study extracted from Salat, Serge. 2021
The later apartments also follow this pattern. A very nice and simple apartment block by Arrhov Frick finished in 2015. Hammarby gård — Hus2 in HG7 development Textilgatan 21-25. Very simple and rectangular, point access, kitchens and cabinetry seperate elements seperating the main living and dining spaces.
Elevation photo by Mikael Olsson
Plan
Section
Overall the location around the water of Hammerby and close attention to infrastructure has produced something special.
Shortcomings
So there has been enough time with this development to identify it’s shortcomings and improve on the model.
The Construction phase was not ecological ie carbon footprint of the construction was not really considered as it is nowadays. ref
The production of construction elements or the extraction of materials from the earth’s crust stands for quite a big chunk of energy use and also carbon dioxide emissions. That is something that I would like to see future sustainable urban districts pick up. - Josefin Wangel
The Electricity consumption is above average Swedish consumption The hope was energy consumption would be 60 kWh/m2 but they are at 112kWh/m2 compared to a baseline of 150kWh/m22
The development has become Upper Middle Class. Basically it doesnt reflect a cross section of Swedish society it’s a city center development. This is a difficult one to control for as the development is so central just by geographical location and brute force of the market how this could have been different otherwise than with a different legislation or ownership model of course this would happen. So the solution to this is probably at a wider level than that of an urban district.
When Hammarby was built it was expected that ecologically friendly families would move in but in fact many typical 2 car families moved in also. Pressure for more car parking has resulted in an increase of private car provision but still Hammarby overall has basically fulfilled the aim for its resident’s to commute using public transport at an 80 percent rate.
Overall
Cities grow and develop and urban areas retain the marks of their history. Hammeby is no different and though no longer cutting edge it represents a giant step forward in the thinking behind Sustainable city development. Let’s hope it continues to prosper.
My old and bad Hammarby photos on flickr. They are not great it was a really rainy dull day!
⚲ location: 59°18’22.4”N 18°06’07.4”E
Some Basic Hammarby Facts.
A mixed-use development of over 160 hectares of land and 40 hectares of water. The development was carried out in twelve phases; construction started in 1997 and completed in 2017. It will accommodate 25,000 people, living and working in 9,000 housing units and 400,000m2 of commercial and office space.
The idea was to be ‘twice as good’ as contemporary developments. That meant to cut emissions and energy usage across the board by 50%. Also water, energy consumption etc. 50% less than standards of the time.
Land usage: Redeveloped on old derelict and contaminated industrial site.
Water & sewage: New technology for water saving and sewage treatment. Waste special built system, with material and energy recycling. This benchmark was achieved with 60% reduction in water use, storm water treated locally, toal waste generated reduced by 20% all against the baseline of inner city Stockholm.
Energy: Renewable fuels, biogas products and reuse of waste heat coupled with efficient energy consumption in buildings.
Transportation: Public transport, car pools and cycle paths, in order to reduce private car usage. Approx 80% if commuters use public transport, cyle or walk.
Construction: Air, soil water emissions reduced by 32-39%
Cost: It’s not prohibitively expensive - Eco-friendly development was approx 5% more expensive than normal.
References:
- BBC - The Swedish wasteland that’s now a sustainability star
- Hammarby Sjöstad: Not quite ‘twice as good’ | by Nikki Yang | Medium
- Hammarby Sjöstad Green Regeneration Stockholm, Sweden — UNEP Neighbourhood Guidelines
- https://urbangreenbluegrids.com/projects/hammarby-sjostad-stockholm-sweden/
What I wrote at the time: ‘Whereas Dongtan exists only on blogs and in the dreams of paddy fields, Hammarsby is very real. Whereas Masdar city copy/pasted between golf clubs, and an International Airport is a future city in the making, it isn’t about sustainable living now so much as attracting development and business opportunities. Hammarby is about changing the city that you see when you look outside the window now.’↩︎
based on numbers found here Hammarby Sjöstad: Not quite ‘twice as good’ | by Nikki Yang | Medium.↩︎