Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.06.2017, Síða 16

Reykjavík’s
Planning Debacle
How Iceland’s capital became the
hodge-podge it is
Words: Paul Fontaine
Photos: Art Bicnick, Trausti
Valsson
URBAN PLANNING
First-time visitors to Iceland’s
capital are often struck by the
city planning patchwork that
Reykjavík is.

Soviet-style apartment buildings,
modernist structures and old-
timey 19th century timber houses
seem to be scattered amongst one
another without rhyme or reason.
As you might imagine, this was
far from intentional. But as you
look around the city, what you
are witnessing is Reykjavík city’s
growth in four dimen-
sions, as Reykjavík city
made its way through
struggles economic,
social and political, all
of which shaped the ur-
ban landscape of today.
T r a u s t i Va l s s o n
is probably Iceland’s
most eminent plan-
ner. His new book,
‘Shaping the Future’,
tackles the issues of
planning and design.
He took the time to
share with us how we
got the Reykjavík that
we know and love to-
day, for better or worse.
“We started w ith
this European style,”
he tells us, referring
to the Dan ish t i m-
ber houses you find
dow ntow n. “But we
soon discovered that
we needed more space,
such as for the univer-
sity and other institu-
tions. After World War II, the ex-
pansion of Reykjavík really took
off. There was a plan made in
1948 that was too grand in scale.”
Out with the old, in with
the new
By this, Trausti means the con-
cept of zoning: attempting to
fully separate residential, com-
mercial and industrial areas.
However, the zeitgeist soon shift-
ed away from the old style and
into a more modernist approach.
“During this period people lost
interest in the old types of build-
ings,” Trausti explains. “Even as I
was growing up, and I was born in
1946, there was hostility towards
the old buildings. With the arrival
of the Americans, and our
strong ties with them,
came these modern-
istic ideas about
buildings and ar-
chitecture. So the
planners at that
t i m e s u g g e s t e d
we demolish more
or less all of down-
town, and some lots
were developed
with new buildings.”
H o w e v e r,
not all of these mod-
ernist bui ldings f it
into the landscape,
and some of them were
decidedly unpopular.
By the 1960s, the pen-
dulum began to swing
in the other direction.
And in with the
old again
“Along came the hippie
movement, and people
started to say, ‘Wait
a minute, these old
buildings are so beau-
tiful. We shouldn't de-
molish them,’” Trausti
says. “There were huge
protests against some
of the planning proj-
ects for more modern
buildings, and some
of these projects were
s t opp e d . B a sic a l ly,
architects didn't consider try-
ing to find a way to make the
new buildings fit in with the
old ones. They just assumed the
entirety of downtown would be
new and modern bui ldings.”
Some ideas, such as to build
massive highways through and
sometimes even over the city
(you can see the remnants of
one such highway on the roof of
Kolaportið), never got past the
planning stages. And natural-
ly, politics also played its part.
Politics ruins everything
“The House of Icelandic Stud-
ies, for example, was started by
[former Prime Minister] Jóhanna
Sigurðardóttir's government,” he
says, referring to the giant open
pit in front of the National and
University Library. “They had got-
ten as far as the foundation being
dug out when new elections came,
and a right wing government came
to power. Now it's been included in
the five-year planning outline, but
there's a delay in this because of
these political tug-of-wars. When
the leftist government came to
power in Reykjavík in 1978,
they threw all the plans
of the conservative
government into
the waste basket,
and when the con-
servatives came to
power in 1982, they
did the same thing
[to the leftists]. It's
childish, and it's been
ver y sad for the cit y.”
Trausti is not terribly positive
when it comes to the state of city
planning today, as he sees tour-
ism having a disproportionate im-
pact on the landscape of the city.
Tourism is killing
downtown
“Things have already gone too
far, and we can't stop it,” he tells
us. “Rent is increasing, and not
just for apartments; tourist shops
make so much money that they can
just buy out the old stores. It's not
interesting anymore to go down-
town. Not least of all for tourists. I
am very fearful that many of these
young people will say, ‘We can't af-
ford to live in the only urban area
in Iceland; I'll just move abroad to
some nice city somewhere else.’"
Trausti believes one way to
remedy this problem would be
to move the domestic airport
out of the city, thereby freeing
up land to build affordable hous-
ing that’s close to downtown.
Ultimately, though, the city’s
very boundaries are going to
have to change with the times.
“The idea that we can con-
t a i n Re y k j av í k w it h i n t h e
old boundaries is not going
to work,” he says. “We're go-
ing to need to expand them.”
How and where these boundar-
ies will expand is an unknown to be
answered by future generations.
16 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2017
“I am very
fearful that
many of
these young
people will
say, ‘We
can't afford
to live in
the only
urban area
in Iceland;
I'll just move
abroad
to some
nice city
somewhere
else.’”
From the Reykjavík skyline
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