Groupe Chronos

Architects and planners have long had the desire to completely build or re-build cities. Naturally, Brasilia is an example of the first along with the many recent plans of eco-metropolises around the world. Grand schemes for the re-planning of cities are also found throughout history. Le Corbusier's plan for Paris is of course among the most (in)famous of these, but it is worth noticing that current planners do not appear to be completely indifferent to such ideas - the popularity of the new 'SimCity' Style Tool for Urban Planning named Betaville underlines this. Being accessible to everyone, it is a brilliant way to increase participatory planning, but it is probably a safe bet to say that NYC planning professionals will be among the most frequent users.

A tool like Betaville acts as a stimulation to the creativity of professionals working within urbanism. It is suddenly possible to re-plan New York, yet only in the virtual world. However, what if this was possible not only on the internet, but in real life? If New York or Paris could be re-done, where would you place the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower? Would you increase the density, provide more green spaces and decrease the number of roads? Would you move the Financial District out of Manhattan, perhaps close to one of the airports? Or would you move La Defence to the 1st or the 2nd Arrondissement?

At a very different scale, these are the questions that the authorities of the Swedish city of Kiruna are asking themselves at the moment. It became clear five years ago that this mining city in the very north of Sweden with a bit less than 20,000 inhabitants is actually situated on top of the very same iron ore, which is the economic foundation for the existence of the city. While it is not a problem yet, the continuing exploitation of the ore will in a few years undermine the physical foundation of Kiruna, eventually ending in a collapse of the city.

In this situation, the electorates find themselves discussing very different topics from everyday politics, e.g. "In which direction should we move our city?" While eventually choosing northwest, they have now settled for east. Luckily, the room for manoeuvre is large in the arctic part of Sweden - having several possible directions of re-location is a luxury which would not be available to New York or Paris.

For a paper on how democratic processes and ideological fantasies interact to shape the future of Kiruna, see Nilsson, B. (2010): Ideology, environment and forced relocation: Kiruna - a town on the move. European Urban and Regional Studies 17: 433-442.