Nordic cities have introduced a wide variety of sustainable urban solutions ranging from efficient waste management systems, advanced district heating networks and renewable energy over to green transport solutions that give priority to pedestrians, bicycles and public transport. The urban population has taken these solutions to heart – as an example, more than 50 per cent of the population of Copenhagen uses bicycles on a daily basis to get to and from work or school.

To react to the many challenges of urbanisation, the Nordic Council of Ministers has launched several initiatives to increase co-operation between the countries to decarbonise the region’s urban energy systems and build more sustainable cities. One prominent initiative is the Nordic Built Cities Challenge, an international challenge competition seeking innovative solutions to urban challenges in specific sites in the Nordic region.

“We set up the Nordic Built Cities Challenge to see if we could help Nordic cities solve some of their problems, many of which are common to cities and urban areas all around the world,” says Hans Fridberg, Senior Innovation Advisor at Nordic Innovation. Teams entering the competition were asked to build their solutions on the Nordic Built Cities Charter, which lists ten principles for liveable, smart and sustainable Nordic cities and buildings. “A key point of the Charter is its first principle, which states that people should be at the centre of everything we do.”

The winner of the Danish competition and the overall Nordic Built Cities Challenge Awards is The Soul of Nørrebro, a climate adaptation solution for Hans Tavsens Park in Nørrebro in Copenhagen. The project converts the existing park into a cloudburst management park, capable of capturing and delaying up to 20,000 m3 of stormwater.

Also the runner-up of the competition, Kera Co-op City, applied a holistic planning approach to the challenge at hand. The project, which was developed by a team led by B&M Architects, presented a plan for transforming a 22-hectare logistics centre in Espoo in Finland into a modern and attractive city neighbourhood.

“We’ve developed a framework for sustainable design, which labels issues concerning urban structure, buildings, culture, mobility and infrastructure, ecosystem services, and of course the technology and economy of creating sustainable cities,” says Inari Virkkala of B&M Architects.

While the challenge competition recently came to an end, the Nordic Built Cities projects will continue as a flagship project in a new initiative launched by the Nordic Prime Ministers, Nordic Solutions to Global Challenges. In this next phase, focus will be on marketing and exporting sustainable Nordic urban solutions to international markets.

Source: www.norden.org
Graphics: www.cop22-morocco.com
   

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