Iceland review - 2015, Page 77

ICELAND REVIEW 75
to construct affordable apartments that
will accommodate Reykjavík’s many new
residents. “We are consulting with student
and rental associations to design and build
2,500 inexpensive rental units, which will
be started in the next three to five years,”
he reports. “These units won’t be built just
anywhere, but specifically close to good
public transportation. Statistics are show-
ing us that, in the average household, trans-
portation costs weigh almost as heavily as
housing costs. If we can manage to mitigate
these transportation costs, residents will be
much better-off, financially.”
Due to the increasing number of tourists
visiting Iceland every year, Dagur supports
building more hotels in Reykjavík, though
not in the downtown area: “We support
the existing plans to construct hotels away
from the downtown area because tourism is
pressing our citizens out of the city center,
putting a strain on the rental market. At
the same time, we are using the tourism
boom as a good excuse to invest in our
infrastructure, for example near Hlemmur
[city bus terminal] and Borgartún [financial
district]. Since we see that hotels are being
used even in the low season, we are working
hard to make tourism a year-round thing
in Iceland.”
Dagur also hopes to spearhead sever-
al initiatives promoting public art and
Reykjavík’s burgeoning image as a mul-
ticultural city. “We have been focusing
on putting art in the suburbs, especially
Breiðholt, and we recently said in a polit-
ical statement that when we enter into
agreement with developers, we want them
to use about one percent of the investment
for the creation of public art in the area,”
he explains. “We want to make art part of
planning, not just an afterthought, in hopes
of increasing beauty within the city.”
He adds: “I also hope to do more to
highlight the contributions of people with
immigrant backgrounds to Icelandic soci-
ety. We must remember that Iceland is a
country of immigrants. … I think a lot of
people cherish the work immigrants have
done in the past decade to improve our
society, so that’s something we certainly
intend to build on.”
DESIGNING A GREEN METROPOLIS

The winner of the 2014 Nordic Council
Nature and Environment Prize, Reykjavík
possesses enormous potential for serving
as a model of environmentally-friendly
engineering and ingenuity. Despite this
success, Kristín Soffía Jónsdóttir—who sits
on Reykjavík’s Council for Environmental
Planning—acknowledges that a lot of work
still needs to be done to enhance Reykjavík’s
image as a green city.
“When the city was applying [to enter]
the European Green Capital Award 2011, it
had to supply details regarding everything
from ground water supplies to the city’s