Introduction
In November 2003, with the headline ‘Lägenhet för nio miljoner’ (A Flat for Nine Million), the Swedish daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet announced the sale of developer NCC Bostad AB’s most expensive flat in the recently developed Västra Hamnen (Western Harbour) district in Malmö, Sweden, after two years of practically frozen sales:
WESTERN HARBOUR. Soon moving vans will pull up outside one of the most renowned flats from the housing fair Bo01. NCC has sold the top floor on the upper corner of the Ralph Erskine house, where housing exposition visitors strolled around on the rooftop terrace in the summer of 2001, contemplating the view from inside transparent windbreaks. The 190m2-apartment cost nearly nine million SEK in investment, with monthly fees of over 9000 SEK.1 (Bergström 2003)
The flat is a two-storey apartment located at the top of the building locally known as the Erskine Huset (Erskine House), completed in 2001 as part of the Bo01 housing exhibition, which involved the construction of an entirely new district in Malmö’s Västra Hamnen. The building is one of the last works by the Swedish-British architect Ralph Erskine. With generous windows and private rooftop terraces, the six-storey building facing the Öresund Strait hosts fifteen luxury flats (Figure 1). The building’s outline, the colourful, diverse window types and the mix of materials in the façade are reminiscent of Erskine’s earlier housing projects. But the exclusiveness and dimensions of the flats and their lack of collective spaces do not represent the legacy of Erskine, who is known in Swedish architecture historiography as the ‘community architect’ who worked ‘against profit interests’ (Egelius 1981: 6). On the contrary, according to the description of the building in the catalogue for Sweden’s contribution to the 2000 Biennale di Venezia, the building in Västra Hamnen, ‘offers housing that meets the highest standards of comfort, individuality and space’ (Brejner 2000: 16). The apartments were designed for a wealthy population, a promotional pamphlet said, with a focus on ‘state-of-art technology’ to solve ‘environmental requirements’ and the construction of ‘intelligent living’ (Bo01 Information Pamphlet [2001]: 14).
Document for planning permission showing the façade of the Erskine Huset, submitted in 2000 by Ralph Erskine, approved in 2001 by Malmö’s planning office.Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö. Available at https://digitaltritningsarkiv.malmo.se/C3WebExtern/DocumentList.aspx.
The City of Malmö hosted the housing exhibition Bo01, also entitled the City of Tomorrow, from May to September 2001. Within two years, an entirely new district, comprising 800 apartments, a landscape display, and an art exhibition, was constructed on a former shipyard site in Västra Hamnen, overlooking the recently completed Öresund Bridge (Figure 2). According to Agneta Persson, the site manager, the development was to become a bright, post-industrial district that would forge a model for a future ‘ecologically sustainable information society’ (Friberg et al. 2001: 125). The name Bo01 combines the Swedish word bo, to dwell, with ‘01’, signifying the year 2001. It was set to be one of the greatest events ever held in the city.
Illustration of Bo01 from an information brochure for visitors (Bo01 Information Brochure [2001]). The map shows Bo01 in relation to Malmö, the Öresund Bridge, Copenhagen Airport, and continental Europe. Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö.
Despite good intentions, economic and political scandals emerged around the exhibition. Deadlines were not met, and buildings were still under construction at the opening, including Santiago Calatrava’s landmark Turning Torso (Figure 3). More than half of the plots remained empty, and visitor numbers were far lower than expected. Eventually, the housing fair itself went bankrupt. Its spectacular profile came to be a negative symbol of both the new economy, characterized by risk-taking, financial speculation, and imaginary values, and of sustainable living, associated with high prices and spatially privileged areas. Flats like those in the Erskine Huset stood empty for years after Bo01 closed.
View from Daniaparken, with the big, seafront Bo01 park under construction. The photograph is from April 11, a month before the exhibition opened. Note that the Erskine Huset is still behind scaffolding. Malmö Stadsarkiv, box F12: 45–50.
The story of the City of Tomorrow has been largely overlooked in planning and architecture historiography. The first aim in this paper is to reclaim Bo01 as a pioneer experience of so-called sustainable urban development; the second is to retrace and understand the event’s history, including its main ideas and their implementation, in order to comprehend its ultimate failure; and the final goal to scrutinize the ways in which the inclusion of the concept of sustainable urban development became a tool to legitimize such a development in Västra Hamnen. The analysis contributes to the field of planning history of post-industrialization in cities by providing a critical perspective on the role of sustainability in legitimising urban redevelopment strategies. By looking back at the City of Tomorrow, we can also extract important ideas that can help promote contemporary discussions on sustainability and so-called sustainable development practices.
The first part of the paper analyses the City of Tomorrow from a historical perspective, with attention to power dynamics. To do so, it explores the field of urban political ecology as theoretical framework, characterizing sustainable urban development as a neoliberal model of urbanization. The second part retraces the event from its inception, studying its design and construction phases, as well as the opening event and its aftermath. The third part discusses sustainability as a marketing strategy, the techno-managerial approach to planning, and the design strategies tested to shape a sustainable life in the district. Finally, the fourth part summarizes the discursive and regulatory ways in which sustainability was implemented in the City of Tomorrow.
Sustainable Urban Development and Urban Political Ecology
The concept ‘ecological modernization’ was established in the mid-1990s to endorse that idea that environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive but rather comprise a solid foundation for sustainable development. Originally formulated in the 1980s by the German sociologist Joseph Huber, the concept provided specific strategies for achieving sustainable development goals in many Western European countries (Mol et al. 2000: 42). In Sweden, this concept was embodied in Social Democratic leader Göran Persson’s vision of the ‘Green Welfare State’ (Lundqvist 2004). In his first speech as prime minister in 1996, he posed the following objective: ‘Sweden shall be a leading force and an example to other countries in its efforts to create environmentally sustainable development. Prosperity shall be built on more efficient use of natural resources — energy, water and raw materials’ (Regeringskansliet 1996, quoted in Lidskog and Elander 2012: 416). This idea of a Green Welfare State entailed changing the relationship between society and its natural environment by improving energy systems, recycling waste, rationalizing raw material extraction and refinement, and investing heavily in green technology. In turn, the implementation of ‘ecological engineering’ and ‘eco-entrepreneurship’ (Mårald and Nordlund 2020: 496) would safeguard jobs and welfare for future generations, and would provide Swedish companies with exportable innovations and practical knowledge.
The concept of Bo01 as an ecologically sustainable housing fair emerged from within this economic vision. The early development stages of Stockholm’s Hammarby Sjöstad (1994-2020), also regarded as one of the earliest examples of a sustainable urban development, occurred almost simultaneously. The period was also marked by the transformation of the Swedish socioeconomic model through processes of deregulation and neoliberalization in the late 1980s, alongside the decentralization of governmental responsibilities, with a shift in public management from national to municipal governance and the increase in the influence of market forces in planning (see Mattson 2023). Municipal planning offices in Sweden adopted growth-oriented policies and formed partnerships with private actors to engage them in processes of ‘urban entrepreneurialism’ (see Harvey 1989), and the ‘marketization of planning policies’ to enhance ‘city competition’ (Ward 1998: 2). This deregulated and decentralized scenario aligned very well with the vision of economic growth and went hand-in-hand with the protection of the environment proposed by ecological modernization (Mol et al. 2000: 7).
In Bo01, this scenario unfolded in different ways, from unconventional collective processes between developers and municipal planners to the prescription of innovative Swedish green technology at the district level. These and other approaches aimed to make the City of Tomorrow a role model for sustainable urban development. The field of urban political ecology emerges as an exciting interdisciplinary field by which to examine the entanglements between urbanization processes, climate change, and sociopolitical dynamics. The publication Turning up the Heat: Urban Political Ecology for a Climate Emergency proposes two ontological shifts to broaden our understanding of these urbanization practices. The first, ‘urbanization of nature’, unsettles traditional perceptions of cities as distinct from nature (Tzaninis et al. 2023: 3). It claims that urban materials — brick, asphalt, steel, or concrete — are processed natural resources assembled through human labour, capital investment, and technology, all governed by power relations: ‘There is no “city” as such; no “nature” as such. There is a perpetual dialectical process: the “Urbanization of Nature”’ (Kaika 2005: 7). The second, ‘extended urbanization’, expands the geographical scope of urbanization to include extractive sites supplying urban developments (Tzaninis et al. 2023: 2). This concept highlights interactions between landscapes in the Global North and in the Global South and between peripheral rural lands and urban centres, as our increased concern for sustainability is based on someone else’s socioenvironmental disaster (Kaika 2017: 91-92).
These two shifts help us rethink the historization of urbanization processes, viewing them not as confined to spaces within urban boundaries but as extended socioenvironmental phenomena that transcend the work of urban planners and architects. This perspective encourages studying how natural resources shape the built environment through the dynamics of labour, capital, and technology, which prompts questions about whom these processes benefit and for whom they are envisioned.
Moreover, urban political ecology analyses the concept of sustainable urban development as a neoliberal model of urbanization, arguing that while it appears an ecologically and socially conscious planning strategy, sustainability often prioritizes profit over equity (for example, Gould and Lewis 2017; Krueger and Gibbs 2007; Swyngedouw 2007; Swyngedouw 2014; Kaika 2005). Whether or not it is intentional, bringing environmental values to new developments or redevelopments attracts affluent residents and thereby displaces low-income residents (Checker 2011: 210). The geographer Erik Swyngedouw defines sustainable development as an example of technocracy, managerial governance, and consensual politics that, due to its widespread acceptance, evades essential antagonisms and the imagination of alternative models. He argues that sustainability consensus tends to depoliticize the question of sustainable urban development, aligning with neoliberal agendas and promoting market-based solutions, privatization, and the commodification of nature, ultimately hindering debate on other ways of urbanization (2007: 32–35, 38).
Using urban political ecology as a theoretical framework offers a way to explore how planning and architecture narratives can enrich debates about the role of sustainable urban development, and it brings further nuance to Bo01 as an early example of this type of urbanization. It broadens the boundaries of the housing exhibition, revealing that sustainability, as both a discourse and a practice, operates within a neoliberal framework that entangles capital-driven interests under the guise of environmental consensus.
To study Bo01, available primary sources about the exhibition were gathered, including preparatory documents, official records, photographs, and building permit plans available at Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö’s city planning archive, and Malmö stadsarkiv, Malmö’s municipal archive. Published marketing material directly related to the fair was examined, including the three catalogues and more than 20 brochures for visitors in four languages (Swedish, English, German, and Polish). Additionally, national press and professional media coverage from 1999 to 2003 were reviewed. All material was analysed and classified through hermeneutic and contextualized readings (Ricoeur 2009). The intersection of official planning and advertising documents with newspaper articles from local press and architecture magazines offers a partial but compounded view of the event that focuses on how the sustainability narrative was constructed and disseminated.
The City of Tomorrow
The City of Tomorrow was by no means Sweden’s first housing exhibition. Housing exhibitions have been regularly taking place since 1985, coordinated by Svensk Bostadsmässa (Swedish Housing Exhibition), an organ founded by the Swedish Housing Department to stimulate the debate on housing, architecture, and technology. In 1995, the year in which Sweden joined the EU, Svensk Bostadsmässa decided to organize a more ambitious fair on the theme of ‘technological and human sustainability’ (Nilsson 2001: 26). The Western Harbour site in Malmö was chosen: a flat, desolate, contaminated landfill peninsula with some industry, offices, and university buildings as well as the immense former Saab factory that housed the Malmö Trade Fair Centre (Figure 4).
Aerial view of Västra Hamnen before Bo01 (year unknown). Malmö Stad website.
Malmö is Sweden’s third largest city, located in the country’s far south. In the late 1990s, its population was about 260,000. Once a typical, industrial, working-class city, the decline of traditional industries called for a re-orientation towards more knowledge-based production. The noteworthy shipyard Kockums stopped operating in the 1980s, and the car manufacturer Saab closed shortly thereafter, in 1991. The industrial decline meant a loss of 25,000 jobs and 10% of Malmö’s population in the early 1990s (Persson and Rosberg 2013). This identity crisis was pivotal for the City of Tomorrow’s narrative: the fair was part of the path to Malmö’s glorious rebirth.
In the book Bo01 Staden. Byggnaderna, planen, processen, hållbarheten (The Bo01 City. Buildings, Plan, Process, Sustainability), published in 2001 to disseminate Bo01’s urban planning process, Malmö’s city council chairman, the social-democrat Ilmar Reepalu, states that local politicians of the 1990s ‘had to realize that the era [of Malmö] as an industrial city was coming to an end’ and had to ‘transform Malmö into a city of knowledge’ (2001: 8). In the exhibition catalogue, the organizers refer to the fair as the beginning of a new era, or ‘Year 1’ (Bo01 Information Brochure [2001]: 5):
Bo01 will act as an ecological spearhead as we embark upon a new millennium. Bo01 will set the standard for European industrial towns. Bo01 will show how an industrial estate can be infused with a new sustainable life. Bo01 – the City of Tomorrow will provide credible and stimulating visions of housing and architecture in Europe in the first years of a new millennium. (Bo01 Information Brochure [2001]: 10)
Bo01 was therefore expected to be much more than a spectacular housing exhibition. It would help change the city’s ‘public image’ (Jansson 2005: 1675), positioning Malmö as a competitive, global, post-industrial city and symbolizing the celebrated information society and globalism that saturated politics during the mid- to late 1990s (Berg et al. 2000).
Life in the ‘new millennium’
The actual challenge for the housing exhibition was giving form to ‘creative environments’ for the new, post-industrial ‘creative class’ (Florida 2005), or ‘IT people’ (Bo01 Information Brochure [2001]: 21). According to the information booklet, visitors had to ‘see how the sustainable society can be realized’ (B01 [2001]: 10) and experience the desirable life and future that sustainable practices offer and shape. The urbanist Richard Florida maintains that attracting the knowledge workers who drive post-industrial economic growth is the key to urban competitiveness in the new millennium: ‘places that attract people attract companies and generate new innovations … leads to a virtuous circle of economic growth’ (Florida 2005: 139). Two excerpts that accompanied the housing display during the fair give us an idea of how life in the ‘new millennium’ was envisioned:
To live in Malmö as a European citizen means that you are closer to airports, the continent and big city but also the small-town atmosphere, and the sea. Nature and quietness. Our family consists of businesspeople with Europe as their working field. Back in the home in Malmö work has to be combined with leisure time in a natural way. To work undisturbed twenty-four hours a day becomes as natural as having a vacation in the home. The children have moved out but often come by. Business associates and friends from different parts of the world arrive for shorter or longer stays.
. . .
I imagine as tenants for a terraced house of 65 square meters with two floors:
First, Maja, thirty years old. Works full-time at Radio Rix as a media saleswoman. Rarely on Saturdays and Sundays. In her free time, she socializes with friends and enjoys being close to the center of the city. Maja is also interested in shares and has bought a lot of Ericsson shares. At the moment she is working on getting a scuba-diver certificate. She loves the sea and having the possibility to take walks by the sea.
Second, Martin, twenty-nine years old. Works as a pilot for SAS after many years of technical education. He likes to walk in the woods and be outdoors. Dives when he has the opportunity and likes to ‘stop-over’ when he is abroad. He likes good food and wine and enjoys cooking together with Maja. Martin’s interest in art is considerable frequently likes to visit galleries. (Eriksson 2001: 14, 24; English in original)
These excerpts convey a vision of a sustainable living paradigm: a future society infused with technology, extreme mobility due to its proximity to Copenhagen’s airport, and access to commodified nature. Moreover, they reveal for whom the sustainable living was envisioned: a middle- to upper-class European or global citizen, working in IT or the creative industries, interested in stock markets, who frequently flies for work or pleasure yet is committed to improving their sustainable lifestyle by equipping their household with the latest technology. This vision did not mirror Malmö’s socioeconomic and ethnical diversity (Gullbring 2013: 43); in the 1990s, Malmö’s population had the country’s highest proportion of foreign-born residents (24% in 1995, with the largest groups coming from Iraq, Iran, and the Balkan counties) and a higher unemployment rate than the national average (Malmö stad 1999/2000) that mostly affected ethnically segregated minorities (Scarpa 2015: 917).
The ‘Quality Programme’
Unlike other housing exhibitions in Sweden, the City of Tomorrow was not privately financed. Although private and public co-operation has a long tradition in Swedish housing, the conditions have changed considerably over the years. Since the neoliberalization processes of the late 1980s, the private sector has become the motor for housing development, in contrast to the former strong policy programmes and mass solutions of the 1930s to the ’60s (see Grander 2017). Consequently, the market determined — and still does — what was to be built, and to avoid risks, companies did not start construction before the property had been sold (Amsellen 2004: 96). In the 1990s, the private sector’s dominance was criticized for leading to repetitive, conservative aesthetics in the built environment based on the ‘conventional’ tastes of potential buyers; this contrasted with the more ‘creative’ and ‘speculative’ spectacular approaches being seen in other European countries at the time.
In this context, Bo01’s planning process suggested a different solution in terms of organization and initiative. Instead of developers, the city could be the primary driver and the largest landowner, retaining the right to finalize the plan. The exhibition was wholly owned by Svensk Bostadsmässa, but Malmö’s city officials assumed most of the planning responsibility for the project. The exhibition would eventually be integrated into Malmö’s masterplan for the entire Western Harbour area. The regional government allocated 250 million SEK via a local investment programme to support the environmental ambitions of the exhibition and promote the creation of green jobs (Nilsson: 26).
Developers were required to participate and collaborate in an unconventional collective process: before the city sold the land, a ‘creative dialogue’ took place between planners, city officials, and developers themselves. This resulted in a planning document entitled ‘Kvalitetsprogram’ (Quality Programme) that served to guide the project design. The ‘Quality Programme’ was intended to act as an operative tool for the developers, developed through a consensus process involving municipal actors, planners, and the developers themselves, to secure the lofty ambitions of Bo01 and the city regarding ecology, technology and the design of outdoor spaces. One of the aims of this planning document, according to the Manual of International Developers, ‘is to create a common platform for achieving the best city district that has been built in the world’ (Manual [2001]: 14) and, according to the document itself, ‘to ensure a very high quality in the district’s environmental profile so that the area becomes an internationally leading example of environmental adaptation of dense urban developments’ (Kvalitetsprogram [2001]: 5).
The use of the ‘Quality Programme’ as a planning tool made it possible to bypass building regulations, such as the Swedish Building Code. The architectural historian Helena Mattson notes that quality programmes emerged in Swedish planning as a new governance strategy in the mid-1980s, allowing planners to maintain control over urban form and appearance by regulating geometries, finishes, and the relationships between buildings and their outdoor spaces while circumventing the Building Code (2023: 144). In Hammarby Sjöstad, for instance, a quality programme controlled the design of the built environment, and a miljöprogram (environmental programme) did so for the sustainability requirements. In the case of Bo01 however, the ‘Quality Programme’ did not regulate the appearance of buildings but instead encouraged as much variation as possible, fixing only maximum heights. Regulatory emphasis was placed on the infrastructure and technology that buildings had to include to meet sustainable standards as well as on the assessment of the green areas through calculation systems. Metrics such as gröna punkter (green points) determined the minimum amount of greenery per block, and grönytefaktor (green area factor) regulated the number of elements — such as birdhouses, bat nests, climbing plants, or frog biotopes — that would promote biological diversity (Kvalitetsprogram [2001]: 52–54).
The European Village
Among the preparatory documents reviewed was a manual for developers in English, a document that targeted international participants in the fair, known as the Manual for International Developers. The manual contains memorandums, conditions and requisites for participation, available documentation, a calendar, and texts explaining the convenience of investing in Malmö’s housing market. Other texts included in the manual argue that Bo01 would bring Sweden, a new EU member, closer to the other EU countries. Interestingly, the manual can be largely read as a call for international partners to take part in the construction of a ‘European Village’ that was to be on the exhibition grounds.
Part of the City of Tomorrow’s masterplan, the European Village was reserved for international European architecture: EU/EEA member states were invited to build one- or two-family dwellings in accordance with newly approved European construction rules while using each country’s production methods and building traditions (Figure 5). According to the manual, the European Village would celebrate the new common rules for construction in Europe in terms of mechanical resistance and stability; fire safety; hygiene, health, and environment; safety in use; sound-proofing, heat and energy (European Commission 1999). It was thus a way of demonstrating ‘the value of having rules common to several countries and highlight[ing] the opportunities afforded by such regulatory framework.’ More importantly, it highlighted Europe as a big market for the construction business — ‘a way of drawing attention to the advantages that can be obtained from a coherent well-functioning European construction market’ (Manual [2001]: 19). The result was reminiscent of the national pavilion culture; a myriad of houses from different European building traditions would be built around a canal and showcase the diversity of European building culture and its networked force on the way towards sustainable development.
Site plan of the European Village. Names of countries developing houses are noted on the plots, from left to right, top to bottom: Denmark (x2), Hungary, Norway, Czech Republic, Sweden (x2), Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Latvia, and Poland. The plots with the ground floor drawings were intended to be developed by other eleven EU countries that signed up but ultimately withdrew. Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö. Available at https://digitaltritningsarkiv.malmo.se/C3WebExtern/DocumentList.aspx.
The manual closes with two parallel images: an interior of the 1851 Crystal Place in London, showing the structure of the vaulted galleries, and an exterior view of the 1930 Stockholm exhibition with the rounded cornices of Gunnar Asplund’s restaurant Paradiset (Figure 6). The two images depict how new technology affects architectural innovation, and, as the manual states, situates the City of Tomorrow in the tradition of ground-breaking exhibitions, ‘housing exhibitions that have changed Europe’ (Manual [2001]: 32).
Spreadsheet from the Manual for International Developers of Bo01. Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö.
Technologies and urban shapes
Bo01 employed Klas Tham as the exhibition architect and designer of the Bo01 masterplan. A Swedish architect from Stockholm, Tham, like many of his generation, began his career designing functional slabs for Swedish housing programmes. He later rejected the functionalist model as homogeneous, inhumane, manipulative, and of an overall deplorable heritage, eventually turning his practice towards more ‘complex’, ‘sensorial’, ‘stimulating’, and ‘human-centred’ design (Tham 2010: 11, 14). His extensive experience working for Erskine between 1968 and 1985 and the writings of Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, and Peter F Smith, all of whom arguing that the modern city was detrimental to human wellbeing, shaped his approach to urban design (Tham 2003: 6).
At the City of Tomorrow, the environmental challenge was primarily addressed through technological innovations, a direction set in 1995 when the decision to host the Bo01 fair was made. The goal was to establish a metabolic district where renewable energy was generated locally, with waste and sewage eco-cycles operating at a district level. The springboard for the event was the collaboration of Swedish research and manufacturing industries, with the aim of developing methods and techniques that could shape sustainable dwellings (Reepalu 2001: 14). A series of technological devices designed by the Swedish industry were thus tested at Bo01: the heating demands for the whole district would be met with a heat pump operating from an aquifer, located under the fair’s surface, with the help of 2600 m2 of solar thermal collectors distributed over the new buildings; electricity would be produced by 1200 m2 of photovoltaic cells and a two-megawatt wind turbine; and domestic waste and sewage would be treated via domestic grinders and separated vacuum waste systems, to later be transported to sewage, biogas, and recycling plants to transform into energy (Henrysson et al. 2013). The flats would also include their own cutting-edge green technologies: heat recovery from ventilation systems; thick layers of wall insulation; triple-glazed, low-e windows; the above-mentioned grinders for domestic waste; and other energy efficient appliances.
Tham’s imprint is evident in the urban design of the district. He wanted a ‘humanistic’ masterplan, where ‘people are put at the centre, and the environment is not seen solely as an area for new technical solutions’ (Kvalitetsprogram [2001]: 9). To this end, Tham writes:
Bo01 argues that the urgently-needed readjustment of society to sustainability can only come about when sustainable alternatives seem more attractive than their opposites. The sustainable city and the sustainable way of life must therefore be at least as convenient, economically advantageous, secure, pleasant, exciting and beautiful as their present-day, less ecologically sound opposites. (Persson and Tham 2000: 110)
The excerpt, published in the European landscape magazine Topos, shows the environmental ethics proposed by the fair: technology solves environmental problems and allows a ‘sustainable way of life’ where lifestyle patterns operate as usual in an example of applied ecological modernization. A self-evaluation report on Bo01 from 2005 puts it clearly: ‘the expo residents would not need to deprive themselves of anything to reduce their environmental impact — it would be both fun and comfortable!’ (quoted in Persson and Rosberg 2013: 14).
Tham’s vision for the masterplan of the City of Tomorrow referenced a fishing village from his childhood on the Swedish west coast, as well as the scale and density of a northern European medieval city (Tham 2000: 20). Departing from a tabula rasa, he takes the concept of diversity as a driving force for the design, as a way of creating a ‘beautiful and stimulating’ space (Kvalitetsprogram [2001]: 12). In opposition to the repetitive, alienating milieu of functionalist urbanism, he envisioned a diverse city where ‘every eighth metre something will happen in the street’ (Tham quoted in Waern 1999: 26). This eventful value for the exterior space was moreover claimed to be a prerequisite for ‘free’ individual choice: ‘Diversity is a must at a time when more and more people have completely different images of a good life. No one can define or programme what a good life is. Instead, we must create diverse spaces where people can shape their own lives’ (Kvalitetsprogram [2001]: 14).
The plan shows a perimeter of taller buildings (four to six floors), protection from cold northerly and westerly winds, enclosing a car-free village-scale interior microclimate created by blocks of row houses and two- and three-storey multifamily flats. Reminiscent of Erskine’s ideas for Arctic towns, this plan has a generally small interior scale, streets six to eight metres wide, two-metre alleys, 40 × 40 blocks and 25 × 25 squares, and the basic order of ‘a net that has been pulled apart’ (Tham, quoted in Waern 1999: 26) (Figure 7). It is a dense area, free of personal vehicles and where walking, cycling, and public transportation are promoted and endorsed by the public authorities.
Detailed plan submitted to Malmö’s planning office in August 1999. Note how the northern part was planned to be ready for the exhibition. Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö. Available at https://digitaltritningsarkiv.malmo.se/C3WebExtern/DocumentList.aspx.
The architecture of the City of Tomorrow is also planned for diversity, and small-scale property division is an unusual tactic to achieve such diversity (Figure 8). Small blocks are divided into individual plots, allowing the involvement of smaller developers and construction companies in collaboration with different architects. While the developers were ultimately responsible for the architectural design of the projects, Tham and his team pushed for the coupling of architects and developers (Kvalitetsprogram [2001]: 4). Twenty architectural firms designed around 500 flats in 75 dwellings. Moreover, the ‘Quality Programme’ dictated that ‘listless, indifferent design and architecture must be banned’ (Kvalitetsprogram [2001]: 12), and limited only maximum heights. Diversity is therefore regulated by deregulating the Building Code. Architects thus had total freedom in terms of regulatory frameworks and were encouraged ‘to do whatever they want as long as they don’t disturb anyone’ (Tham, interviewed 2000: 54). International names mentioned earlier, such as Calatrava and Erskine, shared the stage with Swedish firms like Gert Wingårdh and FFNS Arkitekter (now Sweco), and offices from other Nordic countries, such as Kai Wartiainen and Dalgaard & Madsen Architects (Figure 9).
Initial masterplan sketch. Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö.
Aerial view of the Bo01 area in the early 1990s. Malmö Stad webpage.
A long hangover
Implementation of the masterplan began in 1999, and the first problems were soon encountered. The land chosen for developing a sustainable district model turned out to be contaminated; the demolition rubble containing asphalt and other tar-based products used as landfill had resulted in unacceptably high levels of PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) (Henrysson et al. 2013: 125) (Figure 10). The necessary decontamination work significantly increased the costs and caused delays to the start of the urbanization work. Actual construction began in March 2000, leaving only fourteen months for the exhibition’s developments to be fully built before the exhibition opened.
Uncontaminated soil filling the existing polluted land in the southern part of the plot, Sundspromenaden. Malmö Stadsarkiv, box F12:45–50.
On May 17, 2001, despite the odds, the Swedish king and queen inaugurated Bo01 with fireworks (Figure 11). The king first recalled ‘the inauguration of the Öresund Bridge a year ago and then spoke about the City of Tomorrow and its unique combination of technology and powerful investment in environment, almost as if excerpting a brochure’ (‘Idylliskt’ 2001). By then, both the European Village and the Turning Torso were still under construction, as was most of the northern part of the district. The whole exhibition looked like a construction site (Figure 12). Of the 500 dwellings planned, only 300 were built — the initial idea was to between 600 and 800 — and just three out of the 12 houses in the European Village were complete.
The Swedish king and queen with Klas Tham at the Bo01 opening, May 18, 2001. In the background is the former Saab factory, transformed into the Trade Fair Centre. Photographer: Ingvar Andersson. From Rothenborg (2001: 8–9).
View of the southern part of Sundspromenaden under construction. In the background, Gert Wingårdh’s building for the municipal housing company MKB is under construction. Note that the picture is from April 20, three weeks before Bo01 opened. Malmö Stadsarkiv, box F12:45–50.
For four months, the City of Tomorrow would consist of the display of three intertwined sections (Figure 13): a housing fair with architecture and interior design, including the international section of the European Village; a landscape display with parks, promenades and experimental gardens; and an art exhibition entitled Vision, co-curated with renowned art critic and theorist Boris Groys. In the former Saab factory, the work of renowned international artists such as Anish Kapoor, Sara Sze, and Perejaume looked at questions of domesticity, identity, nomadization, and ecology (Vision 2001).
Visitor’s map to the fair. The blue points show hemutställning (home exhibition), the green are bostadsträdgårdar (interior gardens), the blue lines are parasites (small-scale temporary interventions), and the grey points uteservering (outdoor seating spaces). Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö.
The first signs of economic failure became clear in early June. Visitor numbers were half of what was expected, interest from potential buyers and investors was low, and sales were insufficient. The district began to be perceived as a place for the rich, geographically and socially disconnected from the city. In the standfirst of the editorial page of Dagens Nyheter for August 7, 2001, the planning historian Thomas Hall reveals his disappointment when he writes, ‘There is one point in which the exhibition gives a very clear and unequivocal message about the housing of the future: it will be exclusive and expensive.’ He continues: ‘There is a long tradition of housing fairs in Sweden, and they have often been models for continued construction. But Bo01 seems to be a dead end. Or rather: one hopes that it is!’ (Hall 2001).
In late August, the municipality of Malmö accepted a 40m SEK loan for the Bo01 company, rescuing it from bankruptcy. But when the fair closed on September 15, bankruptcy was a fact: ‘Last Thursday, visitor number 400,000 paid the entry fee to the housing fair in Malmö. Nonetheless, when it closes today it will be labelled a fiasco’ (Rothenborg 2001).
Economic disaster overshadowed the City of Tomorrow months after its closure. Newspapers and journals regularly reported on disillusioned taxpayers, unpaid entrepreneurs, artworks from abroad that could not be returned to their owners, and more. As an editorial in the magazine Arkitektur stated, ‘The mistakes became a serial drama in the media’ (Hultin 2001). The district was continually described as an unfinished, filthy ghost town devoid of social vitality, scattered with leftover structures from the fair (Figure 14). Most flats remained empty for years. The sustainable narrative that had enjoyed political and social consensus was heavily criticized — not for its environmental goals but for its planning process, public-private cooperation, high prices of apartments, and the overall misuse of taxpayers’ money.
Two-page spread of the article ‘Dreaming of a Housing Fair’, published one year after the exhibition’s opening. The caption below the photo reads, ‘It must have started on time. A boy, perhaps with dreams of becoming a builder, wandering around the part of the fair that is still under construction.’ Photo by Ingvar Andersson. From Rothenborg (2002: 8–9).
Today, the area developed for Bo01 is still perceived as segregated. The continued residential development of the rest of the Västra Hamnen peninsula became a testing ground where mistakes and failures from previous phases were addressed in subsequent ones. After Bo01, different types of tenancy and social infrastructures were introduced to counteract social segregation. Despite these efforts, Bo01’s rich public spaces reverted to modernist planning values. The newer phases featured large-scale property divisions, enclosed blocks with internal gardens and playgrounds, and spacious streets, and no green technologies were implemented at the district level due to economic sustainability concerns.
The Reality of Sustainability
The discursive reconstruction of the exhibition exposes the entanglement of sustainability practices and various economic, political, and social interests. Examining these practices and interests in the rhetoric, technocratic approaches, and urban design strategies related to the exhibition help us to understand how sustainability really operated at Bo01.
The ‘frontline’ of sustainable practices
Bo01 can be included in a long history of planning practices that make use of large events to prompt urbanization, despite its failures on several fronts. The desirable sustainable life on exhibit was meant to change Malmö’s identity, steering it away from a city in degeneration and rebranding it as a model of sustainable urban development. But the purpose of the exhibition was more than that. The City of Tomorrow was for a way to present the new EU-member country Sweden to the European housing market, both for real estate investors and buyers. It also was intended to introduce green Swedish technologies and good practices in urban sustainability as exports.
The environmental profile of Bo01 encouraged political consensus and attracted generous project development funding from local, national, and European public authorities. As is often repeated in the preparatory material, the condition was that the fair itself would also become a forerunner: ‘the Expo will demonstrate the position of the Swedish and European “frontline” with regard to environmental aspects of architecture, design, the knowledge of material, and other field areas within town planning and building’ (Manual [2001]: 9). The renovated Swedish green economy would shape a new district to be displayed, seen, inhabited and appreciated by fellow Europeans. The European Village perhaps best epitomizes this idea of the exhibition as a sales display. By inviting all EFTA countries to build a detached house on the site using their own materials, production methods, and traditions, with the same budget and plot dimensions, comparisons were inevitable. As the host country, Sweden, unlike many others, applied potentially exportable cutting-edge green tech construction products to not just the buildings of the European Village but a whole new district, thus positioning itself as a leader in good practices of sustainable urban planning and architecture.
Technocratic environmentalism
The fair was promoted as a model of a paradox: a lifestyle that was both luxurious and sustainable — ‘everyday luxury’, as stated in the catalogue (Eriksson 2001: 52). The generous spaces and well-designed interiors of the flats, all equipped with cutting-edge green technologies, align with the new creative class’s sense of luxury in balance with the environment, where consumerism and excessive mobility keep going. Geothermal machinery, solar panels, wind turbines, waste-to-energy technologies, domestic grinders, and ventilation heat-recovery systems all allow the production of ‘green’ energy and the recycling and management of domestic waste, making the City of Tomorrow energetically autonomous.
This entirely technical approach depoliticises Bo01, overlooking the social implications of an urban development that is presumed to be sustainable. The preparatory documents situated the ecovillages that bloomed across Sweden in the 1980s as precedents to Bo01 (Persson and Rosberg 2013:14). However, these ecovillages claimed autonomy as a way of ‘disconnecting’ from the capitalist-extractivist society and the top-down domination of nature through the use of ‘liberatory technology’ (Bookchin 1965). In the sustainable city of Bo01, however, autonomy is part of a technologically driven project led by the state, research institutions, and manufacturing industries to promote green technologies without addressing the need to alter lifestyles. It represents an approach to sustainability through technocratic governance, simplistically reducing the environmental problems of urban planning processes to a set of manageable technical issues that can be resolved through expertise and technological intervention.
Deregulated diversity
Bo01 was presented as an innovative process, and to some extent, it was. The collaboration between the planning office and the developers in ‘creative dialogues’ and the use of the ‘Quality Programme’ as a governance tool were atypical, but not completely novel in Sweden. However, the way the ‘Quality Programme’ in Bo01 controlled the green areas within the blocks was distinctive. Planners used calculation systems to keep the green content in the design process under control, guiding it towards specific quantitative biodiversity standards without a detailed formal regulation.
In both the fair’s promotional material and in numerous interviews, Tham argued that the social aspect of the new district was carried out with a ‘humanistic’ approach to urban design. His proposal hinged on the concept of diversity as a way to provide individual freedom. The neoliberal sustainable City of Tomorrow seems to have been designed from its exterior image, destined to become a visual catalogue of options from which the buyer is free to choose, unlike in the repetitive environments of modern planning. To achieve this, its ‘Quality Programme’ limited only the maximum building height, deregulating previous design restrictions ‘imposed’ by the Building Code. In a city segregated by class and ethnicity, which Malmö was, and still is, diversity was only referred to as a formal strategy, as a resistance to the abstract aesthetics of modern architecture; it was by no means addressed from a social perspective.
The public space of the City of Tomorrow contains only parks and promenades; there is no single social infrastructure such as a cinema, market, or museum. Moreover, the dense morphology with high building blocks encircling row houses and two- to three-storey blocks, high prices, and the lack of social infrastructure in the district made Bo01 a Swedish version of a gated community, a spatially segregated district for the wealthy ones.
Ultimately, Bo01 symbolizes decentralized planning in an age of retrenchment of the welfare state with its subsequent precipitation of municipal entrepreneurialism in the search of capital. In Bo01, diversity is a marketing strategy, a way of branding the image of the neoliberal sustainable city to make it attractive to investors, ‘IT people’, and the creative class.
Conclusion
The City of Tomorrow bears a complex, composite, and entangled history with broader socioeconomic shifts. It is tied into Malmö’s economic decline, plans for the transnational Öresund region, the adoption of ecological modernization in Sweden’s economy, and Sweden’s new membership in the EU.
This article shows that the concept of sustainability was deployed in different ways. On a discursive level, framing the urban development as sustainable secured political consensus for the event in its initial phase and helped procure local, national and European public funds for its further development. The branding term ‘urban sustainability’ attracted the attention of the general public and potential buyers and, more significantly, it led to the participation of international decision-makers, developers, and designers, positioning Sweden as a leading country in green construction and sustainable urban planning. The fair thus acted as a showcase for Sweden’s ability to export green-tech construction products and sustainable urban planning services.
The analytical perspective facilitated by urban political ecology has helped unveil the interconnected environmental ethics, aesthetic formulations, and techno-managerial character of Bo01. The district promotes consumerist lifestyle patterns and advanced Swedish green technology as key to sustainability, thereby removing any need for social change while increasing apartment prices substantially. Although architecture is deregulated to encourage heterogeneity and individual freedom, outdoor spaces are regulated through the use of a new planning tool, the quality programme. Despite this seemingly deregulated framework, Bo01’s sustainability narrative hinged on unfolded regulations regarding the use of technology and the design of green areas. Its dense, car-free masterplan inspired by the medieval city, and the maintenance of the district technologies and green spaces, evoke a sense of ‘urban living’ in balance with the environment, helping to establish a model of guaranteed, socially-prescribed, and institutionally-supported sustainable living.
Notes
- All translations from Swedish to English are by the author. [^]
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.
References
Archival Sources
Bo01 planning and marketing documentation, Stadsbyggnadsnämnden, Malmö.
Bo01. [2001]. City of Tomorrow. European Housing Expo. Malmö, Sweden 2001. [Information booklet for visitors].
[Bo01 Information Brochure]. [2001]. Västra Hamnen. The Bo01 Area — A City for People and the Environment.
[Bo01 Information Pamphlet]. [2001]. Bo01. City of Tomorrow. European Housing Expo. Malmö. [Folded A4 pamphlet].
Kvalitetsprogram [Quality Programme], dp 4537. [2001]. Unpublished.
[Manual for International Developers]. [2001]. European Housing Expo. Malmö, Sweden. Welcome to Bo01! Unpublished.
Published Sources
Amsellen, P. 2004. How Swede Is It? Architectural Design, March: 94–101.
Berg, PO, et al. 2000. Invoking a Transnational Metropolis: The Making of the Øresund Region. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Bergström, B-M. 2003. Lägenhet för nio miljoner [A Flat for Nine Million]. Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 20 November. https://www.sydsvenskan.se/2003-11-20/lagenhet-for-nio-miljoner/ [accessed 23 May 2023].
Bookchin, M. 1965. Towards a Liberatory Technology. Montreal: La Presse Populaire du Montreal.
Brejner, A, et al. (eds.). 2000. Sweden — Malmö. La Biennale di Venezia 2000 [Catalogue for the 7th Mostra Internazionale di Architettura]. Malmö: Bo01 Framtidsstaden.
Egelius, M. 1981. En hjälte i vår tid [A Hero of our Time]. Arkitektur, 7: 4–9.
Eriksson, S (ed.). 2001. Hemma — Berättelser på en bomässa/Stories at a Housing Exhibition. Catalogue 1. Bo01 City of Tomorrow. 2001. Malmö: Bo01 Framtidsstaden.
European Commission, Joint Research Centre. About the EN Eurocodes. https://eurocodes.jrc.ec.europa.eu/en-eurocodes/about-en-eurocodes. [accessed September 25, 2024].
Florida, R. 2005. Cities and the Creative Class. London: Routledge.
Friberg, A, et al. (eds). 2001. Ute på Bo01/Outside at Bo01. Catalogue 3. Bo01 City of Tomorrow. Malmö: Bo01 Framtidsstaden.
Gould, KA, and Lewis, TL. 2017. Green Gentrification: Urban Sustainability and the Struggle for Environmental Justice. London: Routledge.
Grander, M. 2017. New Public Housing: A Selective Model Disguised as Universal? Implications of the Market Adaptation of Swedish Public Housing. International Journal of Housing Policy, 17(3): 335–352.
Gullbring, L. 2013. City Spaces. In: Persson, B (ed.), The Western Harbour: Experiences and Lessons Learned, Malmö, Sweden. Malmö: Arkus.
Hall, T. 2001. Bomässan in Malmö — en återvändsgränd [Housing Fair in Malmö – A Dead End]. Dagens Nyheter, August 7, 2.
Harvey, D. 1989. From Managerialism to Entrepeneuralism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 71(1): 3–17.
Hultin, O. 2001. En mässa för Malmö [A Fair for Malmö]. Arkitektur, 6: 4–13.
Idylliskt när stans prominenser satt på rad [Idyllic When the Prominent Figures of the City Sat All in a Row]. 2001. Sydsvenska Dagbladet, May 18: 3–7.
Jansson, A. 2005. Re-encoding the Spectacle: Urban Fatefulness and Mediated Stigmatisation in the ‘City of Tomorrow’. Urban Studies, 42: 1671–1691.
Kaika, M. 2005. City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City. New York: Routledge.
Kaika, M. 2017. ‘Don’t Call Me Resilient Again!’: The New Urban Agenda as Immunology … or … What Happens When Communities Refuse to be Vaccinated with “Smart Cities” Indicators. Environment & Urbanization, 29(1): 89–102.
Krueger, R, and Gibbs, D. (eds.). 2007. The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe. New York: Guilford Press.
Lidskog, R, and Elander, I. 2012. Ecological Modernization in Practice? The Case of Sustainable Development in Sweden. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 14(4): 411–427.
Lundqvist, LJ. 2004. ‘Greening the People’s Home’: The Formative Power of Sustainable Development Discourse in Swedish Housing. Urban Studies, 41(7): 1283–1301.
Malmö stad. 1999/2000. Malmö Statistisk årsbok. Malmö: Strategisk Utveckling Stadskontoret, Sweden.
Mårald, E, and Nordlund, C. 2000. Modern Nature for a Modern Nation: An Intellectual History of Environmental Dissonances in the Swedish Welfare State. Environment and History, 26(4): 495–520. DOI: http://doi.org/10.3197/096734019X15463432086883
Mattson, H. 2023. Architecture and Retrenchment: Neoliberalization of the Swedish Model across Aesthetics and Space, 1968–1994. London: Bloomsbury.
Mol, D, Sonnenfeld, A, and Spaargaren, G (eds). 2009. The Ecological Modernisation Reader: Environmental Reform in Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.
Nilsson, PA. 2001. Den ekologiskt hållbara stadsdelen [The Ecologically Sustainable Neighbourhood]. In: Bo01 Staden. Byggnaderna, planen, processen, hållbarheten [The Bo01 City. Buildings, Plan, Process, Sustainability]. Stockholm: Svensk Byggtjänst Förlag.
Persson, A, and Tham, K. 2000. Bo01: The City of Tomorrow in Malmö. Topos. European Landscape Magazine 30: 110–116.
Persson, B, and Rosberg, G. 2013. A Book about the Western Harbour. In: Persson, Bengt (ed.), The Western Harbour: Experiences and Lessons Learned, Malmö, Sweden. Malmö: Arkus.
Reepalu, G. 2001. Hållbart föredöme? [Sustainable Role Model?] In: Bo01 Staden. Byggnaderna, planen, processen, hållbarheten [The Bo01 City. Buildings, Plan, Process, Sustainability]. Stockholm: Svensk Byggtjänst Förlag.
Ricoeur, P. 2009. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University Chicago Press.
Rothenborg, O. 2001. Brist på pengar sänkte Bo01 [Lack of Funds Sank Bo01]. Dagens Nyheter, September 16: 5.
Rothenborg, O. 2001. Drömmar om en bomässa [Dreams of a Housing Fair]. Dagens Nyheter, May 18: 8–12.
Rothenborg, O. 2002. Kunglig start på bomässan [Royal Start to the Housing Fair]. Dagens Nyheter, 11 May: 3.
Tham, K. 2000. Om den virtuosa formalestetiken och den rika urbaniteten [On the Virtuous Formal Aesthetics and Rich Urbanity]. Interview by Mikael Bergquist. Arkitektur, 7: 54–57.
Tham, K. 2003. Människan i arkitekturen: om människans sinnliga och emotionella behov i den fysiska miljön. [People in Architecture: On humans’ sensory and emotional needs in the physical environment.] https://www.fyrbodal.se/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/kiom-1-klas-tham-manniskan-i-arkitekturen.pdf [accessed April 20, 2025].
Tham, K. 2010. Lecture for the Human Habitat Lecture Series, Lisbon, 12 April, https://www.slideshare.net/construcaosustentavel/klas-tham-human-habitat-12th-april-2010-part-1 [accessed September 10, 2024].
Tzaninis, Y, Mandler, T, Kaika, M, and Keil, R (eds). 2023. Turning Up the Heat: Urban Political Ecology for a Climate Emergency. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Scarpa, S. 2015. The Impact of Income Inequality on Economic Residential Segregation: The Case of Malmö, 1991–2010. Urban Studies, 52(5): 906–922.
Swyngedouw, E. 2007. ‘Sustainability’ and the Post-Political Condition. In: Krueger, R, and Gibbs, D (eds), The Sustainable Development Paradox, 13–40. New York: Guilford.
Swyngedouw, E. 2014. The Violence of Sustainable Urbanity. Metropolis, November 24, http://www.metropolitiques.eu/The-Violence-of-Sustainable [accessed 20 April 20, 2025].
Vision: Art Exhibitions. Catalogue 2. Bo01 City of Tomorrow. 2001. Malmö: Bo01 Framtidsstaden.
Waern, R. 1999. Bo01 — Beprövade gränder i nya kläder [Bo01 — Tried and Tested Paths in New Attire]. Arkitektur, 2: 26–31.
Ward, S. 1998. Selling Places: The Marketing and Promotion of Towns and Cities 185–2000. London: Routledge.