Stockholm: The Tale of the Unicorn Factory E-Book

Emma Björner

• Herausgeber: European Investment Bank
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: city, transformed
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 32

Beschreibung

Once upon a time there was a city in a cold place a long way to the north. One day the city started to tell a story about itself. As the chapters unfolded, life in the city changed, and soon it didn't even seem so cold or far away any more. People listened to the story and realised that the city wasn't quite what they expected. They started to tell the story to each other about how the city had created a magical unicorn factory... Here's how Stockholm built a narrative for itself – and backed it up with urban development that was innovative and sustainable.

Leseprobe

Cover

Before the branding: Old Stockholm

The role of the institutions

Environmental and social sustainability

Housing development and challenges

Infrastructure connecting the city

Stockholm’s tech company miracles

Future development

References

About the European Investment Bank

The European Investment Bank is the world’s biggest multilateral lender. The only bank owned by and representing the interests of the EU countries, the EIB finances Europe’s economic growth. Over six decades the Bank has backed start-ups like Skype and massive schemes like the Øresund Bridge linking Sweden and Denmark. Headquartered in Luxembourg, the EIB Group includes the European Investment Fund, a specialist financer of small and medium-sized enterprises.

STOCKHOLM

The Tale of the Unicorn Factory

Emma Björner

Olof Zetterberg

The findings, interpretations and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Investment Bank.

Dr Emma Björner is a researcher and expert sustainability consultant. She works for Enact Sustainable Strategies and is an associate researcher at Gothenburg Research Institute at the University of Gothenburg where her focus is sustainable tourism. She is also senior expert at the International Organisation for Knowledge and Enterprise Development, working primarily with China-related projects, and URBiNAT, a Horizon 2020 project centring on sustainable cities. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, edited a book and wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on the branding of Chinese mega-cities.

Olof Zetterberg has worked for the City of Stockholm since 1981, including as the city’s refugee coordinator. He served at various times as director of Stockholm’s departments of recreation, culture and sport, city planning, traffic, real estate and parks. He chaired the development of Hammarby Sjöstad and, from 2007 to 2018, he was the CEO of Stockholm Business Region. Since 2007 he has been chairman of the Stockholm business incubator STING and is currently a board member of Start-Up Stockholm, a foundation that provides free advice to new businesses.

Emma Björner

Olof Zetterberg

Once upon a time there was a city in a cold place a long way to the north. One day the city started to tell a story about itself. As the chapters unfolded, life in the city changed, and soon it didn’t even seem so cold or far away any more. People listened to the story and realised that the city wasn’t quite what they expected. They started to tell the story to each other about how the city had created a magical unicorn factory... Here’s how Stockholm built a narrative for itself – and backed it up with urban development that was innovative and sustainable.

Created by Stockholm Business Region, 2016

Source: The City of Stockholm Start-up Strategy, 2017

Stockholm often ends up high in the rankings of the world’s most competitive cities. It is seen as capable of attracting talents, companies, visitors and capital. Stockholm is also listed as an attractive and innovative city with high quality of life and a lot of intellectual capital, as well as a city that is safe and secure.

But it wasn’t always that way. This success grew out of bold branding – and smart development to back it up.

At the end of the 1970s Stockholm lacked a common growth strategy for the entire city. As a result, different parts of the city’s organisation worked in their own ways to attract visitors and international investors. Consequently, several images of the city evolved. Stockholm has been depicted in many ways – as the city of culture, the Venice of the North; as an advanced environmental city; and as a city of IT that hosts STOKAB, the Stockholm Challenge Award, and the Mobile Valley of Kista (Dobers & Hallin, 2009). Stockholm has also been depicted as the only truly Nordic big city that combines in unique ways the continental and Scandinavian traditions (Czarniawska, 2002).