Season 3 Episode 4 - SEGREGATION (Part 1)

The more we poked around the edges of what Stockholmers meant when they talked about the separation in their cities, we realized people were talking about many different things. Because segregation comes in many forms. Racial segregation is often the most obvious. But there is also class segregation, segregation by citizenship, by social status, by family size, by age. And the way these forms of separation impact you also influences which forms of separation you are able to perceive.

This episode we will be exploring Stockholm's separations and where they came from.

Script

[Intro Music]

GUSTAV 0:00

“In Stockholm it takes you four generations to get into the city to get to- to become part of the city.”

[Intro Music]

Jess 0:11

Welcome to Here There Be Dragons. I’m your host, Jess Myers. This season, I’m taking you to Stockholm.

Episode 4: Segregation Part 1

[Music]

Jess 1:07

I think that you can probably guess that, while I was in Stockholm I spent a lot of time talking to people. [Jess talking to people] I would talk to anyone. I went up and down train lines, went on walks in the cold, tracked people down at their jobs, hung out with people’s kids, sat around people’s dinner tables, hung around community centers, talking to anyone that would have me. And there is one thing people mentioned over and over, casually, almost as a throwaway.

VIDE 1:42

The city is … is definitely very segregated.

JONAS 1:49

It's age segregated.

NASIM 1:51

Growing up in Stockholm during the 90s, the city was even more segregated than it is today.

JONAS 1:58

It's um… it's ethnically segregated.

CARLOS 2:00

Like a much much much stratified and segregated neighborhood.

JONATHAN 2:06

Like everything is like so it feels stiff and controlled. These people don't necessarily meet a lot because it's so segregated.

[ Quote ] 2:15 

We were segregated from the schoolhouse door.

Jess 2:18

I’m a Black American so when I hear the word segregation I have a very specific picture in my mind…

[ Quote ] 2:24

Sure I'm nothing whatever against negros. That is no, that's really not the question. The question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance, which is a price to be paid for segregation. Segregation means you don't know what's happening on the other side of the world because you don't want to know.

Jess 2:37

But the more I poked around the edges of what Stockholmers meant when they talked about the separation in their cities, I realized people were talking about many different things. Because segregation comes in many forms.

Racial segregation is often the first thing that comes to my mind. But there is also class segregation, segregation by citizenship, by social status, by family size, by age… And the way these forms of separation impact you also influence which forms of separation you are able to perceive.

The city’s earliest separations were not so different from Paris or many old cities, the edges of Stockholm were initially organized to provide for the center.

ERIK 3:22

The main factor that I usually bring up is the geographic issue of Stockholm, being centered on the Old Town, which is an island in between the lake Mälaren on the west, and then the Baltic on the east. [Water sound]. This makes it kind of an hourglass shape.

Jess 3:42 

Fanning out to the north and south are rural and industrial spaces where workers and farmers produced food, textiles and the other raw materials of life. But the city’s waterways prevented its productive edges from ever touching, creating a division between North and South. Here's Eric. And you should know him by now, but in case you don't, he's the architect and researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

ERIK 4:09 

The center was populated first and then for a few hundred years was the urban condition, and then everything outside of that both to the north and to the south was seen as urban land. In incremental steps. There were a few periods in the 1700s and then the 1800s primarily where the urban fabric was extended outside of the old town and into the northern and southern islands essentially.

Jess 4:39

While Stockholmers are not as restricted as the industrial workers and farmers of the past, this urban division lives on in the city today as a mental barrier. Stockholmers perceived the north-south division as a barrier of distance, cost of travel, or just feeling out of place.

ALFRED 4:58

I mean as well as a mental divide, there is a historical regional divide because the Swedish landscapes, it's what they're called, literally goes through Lake Mälaren, and divides southern Malm from Norrmalm.

PHILIP 5:17

So it's like a very hard line that right cutting through the middle of Gamla Stan in my opinion.

ARVID 5:23

Even if it's less than 8 kilometers apart, you never go to the other side of the town.

ALFRED 5:30

But that hasn't affected anyone in hundreds of years, but it's still something we learned about at school. 

PIGLET 5:35

Om jag förstod det rätt. Alltså jag tror att det…alltså bor man på norra sidan då tror jag att man håller sig mest på norra sidan. Jag tror att man känner sig mer bekväm där liksom och så inne i stan men alltså, södra sidan, jag åker nästan aldrig dit.

PHILIP 5:41

I grew up primarily in the south of the city, and there is a really harsh line where you go and you move.

PIGLET 5:48

Det är om jag har någon släkting eller vän som bor där och jag åker dit för att hälsa på men jag kommer liksom inte på att jag ska bara åka hit på södra sidan för att bo här liksom och så skulle jag tro att det är för dom som bor på södra sidan också, att det är samma sak men man är väl liksom hemma där man bor och rör sig liksom där.

ARVID 5:55

Me and my friends jokes about it because if someone lives in Hawejda which is really close to the city center but on the south side and they moved to, say for an example, Solna which is really close to the city center but on the north side. it's like completely different worlds.

PHILIP 6:13 

I don't know really know why that has happened, I think it's because Stockholm is such a divided city in general, like it's such an archipelago, so you have all this water disconnecting people.

.

PHILIP 6:44 

I can mean I talk to people my age, where they're like, I could never live in the south. That's terrible. I have no feeling for that. And I feel like that for the North. I'm like, how could I live there?

Jess 6:57 

But the thing about developing cities is the edges tend to move.

Separation in Stockholm has become more complicated because of years of grappling with two large questions: How should a government provide for its residents AND who should have access to those provisions?

To begin to untangle these questions we will have to start in the 1950s. Under the power of the Social Democrats, Sweden began its plans for one of the West’s most ambitious housing schemes. You might recall in the last episode that we promised you we’d discuss this policy, the Millions Program. Well, we’re here. 

GUSTAV 7:39

I mean, Stockholm has never had enough apartments almost, you know, there was something called the million housing projects in the 60s or something where they tried to build a million apartments already. Then there was the housing, there was not enough apartments, and that is still the case very much like the days like busloads of people who arrived at Stockholm every day, literally.

Jess 8:02

By 1950 most Swedish cities were experiencing enormous population growth. Similar to now, residents were struggling to find long-term places to live.

This crisis set in motion a series of studies to prepare for an enormous scheme: one million housing units built in 10 years, across the entirety of Sweden. That’s 100,000 housing units built per year.

The program began in earnest in 1965. And listeners, it worked.

In fact, they pulled it off a year early, by 1974 over a million housing units were built.

[Music]

NAZEM 8:46

Sweden was urbanized quite late. And a lot of people live in single-family houses 70% or so. So city center development has been quite slow. In the larger cities.

Jess 8:58

Here’s Nazem again. He’s the urban policy professor from last episode.

NAZEM 9:01

When we had this housing boom, where the government built a lot of working class and middle-class housing, it was in the outskirts of city centers, on cheap land in the outskirts. While also a lot of housing was demolished in the inner cities to make room for these central business districts. And when they built these working class family housing, it was like this amazing welfare state, civil society, and private commercial, industrial building company achievements working together to provide housing for a million people. And it was successful as a project in several ways.

[Quote] 9:44 

“Wonderful thing, wonderful conference. Wonderful, convenient...”

NAZEM 9:49 

And one of the ways was that it provided really high quality and standard housing to poor or middle-income people. It was scientifically… really research like the kitchens. How big should the kitchens be suitable for the housewife at the time.

[Quote] 10:08 

“All the marvels of science, you will still be a busy homemaker…”

NAZEM 10:12 

The exact amount of light and space for children in the yards. So if you look at what we call the modernist neighborhood plantings or what in an American discourse would be called the projects, these million program home neighborhoods, modernist neighborhoods of postwar Sweden are really child-friendly, in terms of, you know, really being generous of playing grounds and, you know, small forest distance and, you know, this kind of traffic separated safe structure for children to play in, but also, you know, a lot of generous space. And at the time, you know, technically advanced housing in terms of, you know, central heating, and hot water and, you know, facilities that has been during like 50 years without major renovation. So they were, you know, high standard in several ways.

[Quote] 11:07 

“We have yesterday's drudgery and routine, that are able to express your own pace and imagination…”

[Movie Quote]

Jess 11:20

In the beginning, these housing projects were celebrated. As Nazem said, they introduced domestic technologies that prior to the program were still uncommon in a slowly urbanizing Sweden. The indoor plumbing alone was a huge step forward for many working-class families at the time.

Stockholm was doing what most post-war cities all over Europe were racing to do: modernize.

And they did so with cutting edge building technology that was emerging from France: pre-fabrication. Gone was the need for artisans like carpenters and masons, in their place was a material that revolutionized housing all over the world: prefabricated concrete panels.

JONAS 12:03

where I was from, it was like, two storey buildings, family and houses. And in the other neighborhood, it's like concrete, big concrete buildings, high rises, satellite dishes, on the... on balconies, subway instead of commuter train, you know, so quite a lot of like, yeah, it looks really different, less green, more concrete, and stone.

TANVIR 12:37

It's like you made neighborhoods out of Legos. And you just placed them on a map, and different buildings facing each other. And then there's this yard in between where you play where kids play, and then you do another one next to it, another one next to it...

And then when you've done that, you've created like a huge block. And then you copy that design and put that design next to the first one. And then the third one, and the fourth one. So like all the areas look the exact same.

Jess 13:14

Magnus, remembers going to visit these new neighborhoods with his architect father ...

MAGNUS 13:19

My father was an architect, and he was very much engaged in projects in the northwestern suburbs of Rinkeby, in Teamster who spin Alcala. And so I remember going out there. Basically, when these areas were built, and this, they looked amazing with this kind of new houses, and so forth.

So I don't think there was any idea that this, this would become a social problem, which apparently, later on, became, I mean, we went there and it was very much a kind of pioneer moments in a way so it didn't at all have any kind of bad reputation or anything, of course.

So I think during that period, I mean, the inner city was maybe a bit more scary because it was more rundown.

Jess 14:11

Here’s Carlos, a curator at ArkDes, the architecture Museum in Stockholm. He curated a whole show on these panels.

CARLOS 14:18

A third of that million units were built with prefabricated concrete panels. And it was a process that was so like the use of prefabricated concrete panels in Sweden happened because there is a group of people that is called a D4 group that goes to France and learns how the technique is produced there.

They go there, they studied, they visit all the factories, they develop a series of like, well, albums of photos of documents of drawings about that issue. And they bring it here as a tool that they thought there is something that we can implement here, and we can develop and that was connected to the million for project.

Jess 14:59

In the Millions Program, the Social Democrats were confident they had answered the first of these really big questions. How should a government provide for its residents? You simply build one million housing units in 10 years.

Problem solved, no?

Not exactly, because of course, there’s that very tricky second question: who should have access to these housing units?

And that’s... the key to the whole dilemma.

As Nazem said, the land that these Millions Program apartments were built on were at the very edge of the city, removed from the commercial center because it was cheap to build there. This decision ensured that whoever lived in these apartments would be residents of the city’s periphery.

That was done… by design.

MARIE LOUISE 15:45

It is extremely spatially segregated. It was built that way, like the way a city developed, along the subway lines was like little pearls on a string, where every pearl was separated from the next one with green areas. So, it was thought of to be separate. There were no connections except for like little pathways through these green areas.

Jess 16:12

That’s Marie-Louise.

MARIE LOUISE 16:13

I am an architect by training but I work as lecturer at the Royal Art Academy with the course Decolonizing Architecture.

What that happened in like the 70s, was that we had this big influx of working immigrants to come to work in Sweden, because it was not enough labor. These were mostly the new suburbs of Rinkeby, Tensta, and then later Skärholmen, Satra, these parts, and now they're labeled as logo songs.

But that has a whole other politics weaved into it. Because these places are as layered as the rest of Stockholm.

Jess 17:08

The influx of workers from the 70s is hugely important because they were not just any workers, they were... from all over the world.

The Social Democrats early stance on immigration was one of welcome. The 60s and 70s were decades of global upheaval whether it was revolutions, military coups, or natural disasters, the world’s migrants were seeking stability. And many found it in Sweden.

When immigrants from Chile, Iran, Turkey, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, and many more countries arrived in Stockholm, they became working class.

TANVIR 17:44

But the short answer is Miljonprogrammet, and lots of immigrants started living there because it's affordable. We came into like working-class status, I guess, like people who were much poorer, and so on.

Jess 18:01

Here’s Jelena. She’s an architect whose parents immigrated to Stockholm in the 70s from Serbia and Montenegro.

JELENA 18:08

I grew up in Brombaren which is maybe half an hour outside of Stockholm and it's an area that's part of the one million program here in Sweden.

Actually, I mean, security, you could kind of interpret in different ways. I mean, a security in the sense that it was unsafe, because there were these maybe like criminal activities was mostly in the commercial center. Because that's what that was the Hangout, where, you know, these gangs gathered.

But there was another kind of level of security or safety, which was about, like, getting lost [laugh]. And this area is it's basically an accident it happened that again, got lost in everything. It's just a replica of the same module. And everything looks exactly the same.

So I actually did, and also, yeah, as a kid, I did get lost. Seriously, it sounds crazy, but I did. It was really difficult to orient oneself, because it was like this inner gardens, and they were just repeated, like laying next to each other.

So there was like, not this kind of hierarchical structures in like, or, or even like, points of sight where you could kind of find your way back or so. Yeah, I even went into the wrong like entrance once and went up to the floor where my apartment was, and I rang on the bell and somebody else was, I have such a strong memory of that as a kid.

So for me, that was more like scary. I think like when I grew up in that area, I mean, that's an... that's what they also tried to do with with the renovation of the area where they try to differentiate. So they painted different colors and made the entrance different and so on.

I'm sure it's not because kids get lost but... but I mean, that kind of applied to my growing up and, you know, security in that sense, the orientation, the lack of ability to orient oneself in the area.

Jess 20:07

When immigrants from all over the world moved into Millions Program housing, it changed the public image of those units, and along with it what the government was willing to provide.

[Music]

NAZEM 20:37

There's been slummification process…

Jess 20:42

Here’s Nazem again:

NAZEM 20:43

...where as these neighborhoods have been inhabited by poorer and poorer residents since the 80s or so. And also to a larger extent, immigrants, so like non-white Swedish people.

The investments aimed to you know, renovate and rebuild and adjust, you know, some of some of the unthought aspects of these environments have been lagging behind.

Jess 21:17

As we talked about last episode. The 90s were a period of privatization in Sweden. The Swedish government sold public housing at a discount to private companies and residents to avoid the costs of renovation.

NAZEM 21:29

For public housing company to get loans to refurbish the housing was extremely expensive, compared to, for example, somebody who owned their own homes. And this has continued and has also been accentuated. So we see this growing slummification process, where basically a good standard at a time at a certain point has become quite old.

And we have also a new, relatively new problem with this slumlord kind of symptoms where it could be the public housing companies, but mostly is when they sell these some of these housing blocks to private owners. The business idea is to you know, to minimize renovation and maximize rent, so people pay for quite lousy renovations in the housing.

Jess 22:28

As the Millions Program grew older, the attention to maintenance waned, and its population changed, the housing that had once been lauded for its slick modernity was now regarded with disappointment and even fear.

YASMEEN 22:41

A mental barrier between north and south? I would say more a mental barrier between immigrant populated areas and non-immigrant populated areas. I don't think Skärholmen and Tensta is that much different. One is in the north, one is in the south.

But skärholmen and sköndal, they're both in the south, but sköndal (sp) was a completely different place. Mostly Swedish populated is where I got the incident with the guy who tried to trip me, and I don't know what he was trying to do, he wanted me to fall into the railways or something. But he tripped me in the train station, and I wouldn't say skärholmen and sköndal have anything in common. They're both in the south.

So, to me it would be more like, Swedish areas, non-Swedish areas, the barriers.

Jess 23:33 

These new barriers were immediately noticeable to Samuel, when he arrived from Ethiopia at the age of 13. 

SAMUEL 23:39

When I was on the red line, I was like mesmerized to see the amount of the border that is invisible, and Stockholm, which is their socio-economical border.

Even on the blue line, green line is so visible, who gets, like, on and off where, and that was like the people of color, the working class people, the families who are migrant or have migrant backgrounds always live on the far outside of the subway lines.

And that was something I noticed when I was, I guess, even when I was 16/17, but never really could contextualize it in terms of what it meant. I just always, you know, like, just moving around the city with my mom visiting her friends across town, you get to assume like these areas are always almost like as if they were reserved for us, meaning people of color migrant families, you know, like the people.

So I felt like, oh, white-Swedes don't go to these places or they don't live here. But then you get to understand this socio-political climate of Stockholm and a country in a city that is internationally known for, I guess, not a huge class divide, but it's for people who live here, it's really noticeable. It's really about access, it's really about rent, it's really about who has access to what is provided where.

Jess 25:14

That shift created another, and newer, layer of segregation in the city. One that Samuel feels still today.

SAMUEL 25:22

A lot of my friends from Hässelby and Vällingby, they never went to town.

 A.) They felt the city was not theirs, kind of, like you know if you went there you just... yeah, was not a welcoming environment. And then B.) it also was a question of the cost, of you know both getting there, but also like what can you do when you are there, that doesn't cost.

Jess 25:53

The new residents of the Millions Program became associated with the failure of those housing units. The architecture and the people became one idea.

CARLOS 26:02

Right? This is actually a question that is interesting.How a building becomes an idea how society thinks of a technique and has an automatic response to it. And if you mentioned the word prefabricated concrete panels in Sweden, the automatic response is negative. That's a fact.

Why is negative? Well, because there was a moment in which specific kinds of buildings were associated with a specific kinds of neighborhoods. And those neighborhoods were associated with certain kinds of attitudes or specific groups of people that were living there and that was associated negatively with for society. And that was part of media that was part of a general cultural construct.

Jess 26:51

Carlos’ question continues to stay with me. When does a building become an idea?

The buildings of the Millions Program were always an idea. Or maybe a better word would be an ideal. It was a policy that attempted to answer what if we could house everyone? What if housing was not a crisis?

But the political will ran out on both ideal that decent housing was everyone’s right and that everyone deserved it. In part two of this episode, we’re going to take a closer look at the current life of the Millions Program and the people who live there. So join us next time for Segregation Part two.

[Music]

Jess 27:43

We are produced with the generous support of the Graham Foundation and Konstnärsnämnden (The Swedish Arts Committee). Thank you to our senior producer Adélie Pojzman-Pontay and our team of graduate assistants from the architecture department at the Rhode Island School of Design: Bilal Ismail Ahmed, Daniel Choconta Guerrero, Kim Ayala, and Uthman Olowo. Fatou Camara consults for the show. Cory Jacobs does our music. And Adriene Lilly is our sound producer.

If you’re not on Patreon yet, you are really missing out on some very cool content, and some beautiful stickers. There is whole mini-series of the shows that spotlight all the digressions that we have to cut.

[Quote] 28:28

We are gonna be building new buildings, the same way that we have addressed arriving to the mall.

Jess 28:34

 You can find those by signing up for our Patreon to support the podcast. If you still can’t get enough of us, find us on social media, which you can find in the show notes along with our website and newsletter, all full of fun content like readings, maps, and videos.

If you have a comment or a question record it and send it to us at htdbpodcast@gmail.com. You might end up on the show.  And Last but certainly not least rate and review us 5 shining stars on Apple Podcasts, it helps other people find the show!

Okay, until next time, this has been Here There Be Dragons!

[OUTRO]

[Quote] 29:33 

City between the bridges:

 There are many Stockholmers. And the name means many things for many people. But for me, it is the city of my childhood. The city of 1000 trades. The city of the silent crowds. The city with no faces. The city with no dreams.