Vision for Sustainable City: The Case of Bo01, Malmö, Sweden

Currently, sustainability has been regarded as one of the key issues in the world. Historically, different cultures have developed environmental design as a means of vernacular architecture and urban design to fit their climatic, economic, political, cultural, and social context. Similarly, sustainable design in contemporary architecture and urban design needs to be developed according to its context and lessons should be learned from past as well as current successful cases. Moreover, local solutions have global importance too. Although, technology is playing an important role providing the same solutions to projects in different regions, yet the challenge is how to translate and combine the hard with the soft aspects of sustainable design. A project such as Bo01-first European Housing Exposition in 2001, in Malmo’s West Harbor district, Sweden, has addressed and tested their vision for a sustainable city. The project was able to successfully revitalize the city from a degrading formal shipyard and car-manufacturing city into a liveable, efficient, revenue-generating, high technology city of the future with a well-planned and sustainable-oriented community. It was supported by the Swedish government and EU funded the project to test new methods and techniques for sustainable cities of tomorrow. The goal of this project was to create ecological, social, technical and human sustainability in a high quality development. In the first phase, 522 apartments and 37 houses were constructed in 50-acre site and 1,200 -1,500 people are living. It was started in 1996 and the first stage was finished in 2001. Eventually, 30,000 people will live or work on the 325-acre landfill of the Western Harbor. Bo01 project is a good example of how an experimental sustainable urban development was successfully initiated, processed, implemented in a workable long term model. It pursues high quality design with an integration of technology and sustainable. Although there were positive and negative responses, it is helpful to understand the process of sustainable urban development. Bo01 was a holistic concept of urban planning, including soil decontamination, renewable energy design produced 100% locally, ecocycle, traffic and pedestrian district, embedded in green, as well as innovative water and waste systems. In this paper an analysis of architectural and urban sustainability from the case of Bo01 will be presented, looking into to the historical, political, economical, and social issues involved in a holistic sustainable development. Through the analysis, a vision for a green, sustainable urbanism can be sought.