MUNICIPAL AND REGIONAL PLANNING, HOUSING, AND URBAN RENEWAL IN GREATER STOCKHOLM

Abstract

The Kingdom of Sweden is the largest of the Scandinavian countries, with a sparsely distributed population of 8.5 million inhabitants. Stockholm, which was founded in 1252 and became Sweden's capital and administrative centre in 1523, has 670,000 inhabitants in the city itself and about 830,000 in the metropolitan area. Built on 14 islands linked together by 50 or so bridges and situated between the fresh water of Lake Mälaren and the salt water of the Baltic Sea, Stockholm has a strategic location which accounts for its also having become the dominant municipality in central Scandinavia. Significant migration to Stockholm from Sweden's rural areas did not begin, however, until the second half of the 19th century when the Industrial Revolution finally reached the country, the city's population mushrooming to 300,000 by 1900 and peaking at 810,000 in 1960. Today, Greater Stockholm has more than 1.5 million residents, who constitute about 18 percent of Sweden's total population. Fifty‐one percent of Stockholm's households consist of one person and, 30 percent, of two persons. Moreover, only 16 percent have children under age 16, which helps to explain the fact that 22 percent of Stockholm's population is over 65 years of age. Thus, it is not surprising that only 11 percent (41,110) of Stockholm's 380,000 dwellings are one‐ and two‐family houses; 89 percent are apartments (City of Stockholm 1989).

Citation

Huth, M.J. (1995), "MUNICIPAL AND REGIONAL PLANNING, HOUSING, AND URBAN RENEWAL IN GREATER STOCKHOLM", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 15 No. 1/2/3, pp. 68-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013205