Eco-Village In Sweden

Sustainable Development We are in the middle of change from the industrial urbanization to the eco- knowledge based building.

By new technology, new ideas, new materials and new using of older technology and materials we change the buildings to be more effective and for saving heat, electricity and make a healthy, nice and good quality environment for living.

Sustainable Development have been very important the last 50 years.

But in same time it’s been a wide and deep concept, and therefore more and more easy to get lost in. In the same time as it’s highly important that people in general get’s and keeps a good opinion about sustainable development there’s a great risk that people losing their trust in the concept and therethrough their trust in different professions that’s working with and depends on this.

Therefor it’s so very important that we always maintain an clear and steady course of what sustainable development are and how we get there.

I wrote my exam report about sustainable development and what it means for planning, specially in small cities. I also wanted to plan an area in an small Swedish city to experiment with the modern way of build houses that’s good for the environment.

My point with my work was that there’s no strategy of sustainability of cities that works all over Europe, all cities needs their own strategy based on their history, possibilities, economical recourses, population, geographical location, surrounding nature and so on.

But what’s interesting in this matter, for this assignment, is one of my plans for an area in a small Swedish city.

The plan I made will show the change to eco- building and contain both “ordinary” sites and an eco- village. Be course there’s no eco- building in this city at all it have to be introduced somehow some when.

In this case this eco- village are located close to nature and forest, but are in the same time connected to the city and the cities infrastructure.

The area of the eco- village will not allow cars, except if there’s anyone who need to drive to the house to leave or pick up something, maintain the moving access of maintainer vehicles (like garbage trucks, clearing of snow and so on) as well as for emergency vehicles.

But most of all the eco- village are made for people who walks or with bike, as well as it’s planed to been taken care of by the people who lives there.

The position of the buildings, the shape of the buildings, the materials and so on are closed to make the village effective, as well as the gardens are designed to show people how an ecosystem works by compote and the dams of water (both the “gray water” from the houses and the rainwater). There will be possible to plant and tend the garden as the inhabitants wants.

Personally I think there should be an eco- village in each city to show people how easy we can change our life’s and how to create an more sustainable living.

Most of the time the eco- villages get really nice and cosy, a good environment for living and a creative place for kids to grow up.

The most difficult task about sustainable development is to make general people to change their lifestyle to consume less and consume right. To make people take that chance when they choose themselves.

“We haven’t inherit the World from our ancestors, we’ve been borrow it of our children” Anders Rodewald, Karlskrona 2010 1