The Swedish Message

Imagine you had just spent 20 years turning a burned-out urban core from a carjacking capital to one of the world's greenest neighborhoods. Imagine as well that delegates from all over the world visited your city to find out how you did it- and then are so impressed upon touring the district that their first reaction is: "I'll take three." Then imagine being tasked with a way of making that possible.

The neighborhood, of course, is Hammarby Sjöstad. Conceived and developed in the early-mid 90's as Stockholm tried to build momentum for a 2004 Summer Olympics bid, Hammarby is one of the best examples of sustainability-from-the-ground-up. More on that in tomorrow's post.

The aforementioned mission is owned by a small collection of Ministries, Councils, and Institutes in Sweden, some of whom I met early this week. Today's discussions focused on the idea of marketing and exporting the idea of Swedish Sustainability as a whole. While yesterday's topic focused on the Swedish Trade Council's activities (most especially with their SymbioCity marketing platform,) today's chats took on a wider scope.

"Marketing Sweden is a great challenge," said the Swedish Institute's Susanna Wallgren, "because as a country we have this focus on ecology and harmony with nature that is quite unique and certainly very valuable given the global excitement about sustainable solutions. Getting that message out is the Swedish Institute's mission." Wallgren went on to mention that the end goal is simply to build familiarity - other global citizens are far more likely to do business with, visit, and care about a nation they know something about.

Micael Hagman at the Foreign Affairs Ministry described the challenge as specifically related to Sustainability very succinctly: "Our charge is to provide the setting for Swedish companies abroad- usually to take part in public procurement activities. This can be anything from a traditional wastewater plant up to a high tech, alternative energy installation." As part-owner of the STC (which was discussed in yesterday's post,) the Foreign Affairs Ministry focuses on Sweden's USP's (unique selling points,) not least of which is the fact that Sweden doesn't just talk about sustainable solutions.

What really makes Sweden different compared to other nations is that they have had real brick-and-mortar successes they can point to and actually show off. Växjö (more on them next week,) Malmö, and others are the result of hard work and difficult choices based on the need to solve crushing problems of their era.

"We didn't start with some grand sustainability concept, and then build cities that met a planned framework," said Hagman. "Most of the best practices we have developed over the decades were born of sheer necessity- when the oil crisis struck, we had to develop community water heating systems or face economic catastrophe. We needed to rapidly roll out wastewater treatment biogas systems for the same reasons, along with cleaning up our devastated wetlands and preventing eutrophication." But now, the challenge is to take that hard-won knowledge and practice and tell the world.

So back to our hypothetical shoppers from unnamed emerging economic powerhouses visiting the Hammarby neighborhood, checkbooks in hand. What's the current answer for those eager to purchase their very own copy?
"At the moment, we are working on assembling a coalition of Swedish and Global companies that can answer that call," said Hagman. "But a very exciting development is that a new coalition, led by big Swedish companies, has created a micro-version of this concept called the SymbioCamp."

The SymbioCamp is, in a nutshell, a ready-made aid/refugee camp that has its future planned out.
"Rather than just burning these camps, or forgetting about them, the SymbioCamp can take on a useful life after its function of fighting humanitarian crisis is over," continued Hagman. "Of course, the SymbioCamp design also aims to alleviate the many problems of suddenly condensed, usually harried human populations- water, shelter, etc. have been considered in this model." The SymbioCamp concept is very new; here you can see what Midroc, a coalition partner, has to say about it.

Hagman's next step is to find ways of building the SymbioCamp model up into a full district- or city-level package; one that works as well as its Swedish prototype but still respects its local environment, needs, and design aesthetic.

In conclusion- bringing the whole message of Sweden's competencies in the area of sustainability has been a long and difficult road, but it appears that groups like the STC, the Ministries, and the Institute are gaining ground. This blog will stay active in describing their progress.