
A City That Is Moving 9 Kilometers Down the Road - Thevet
http://nextcity.org/features/view/the-city-that-is-moving-9-kilometers-down-the-road
======
michaelleland
This is an interesting article to me, and fairly near to my heart--I'm the
founder of a small "remote-enabled" startup based in Washington State that
moved to Kiruna for a year. I'm 6 months into the trip now, typing this within
site of the mine in question.

The interesting part of this article to me was the part that discussed the
anthropologist's findings, towards the end of the article. It confirms what
I've seen anecdotally as well--the men are mostly ambivalent, some slightly
optimistic, and the women are slightly anxious. It's a big project, but the
timeframe of multiple years greatly reduces the stress on people. The
businesses are changing plans slowly to accommodate, as are government offices
and government-owned housing authorities, but there is no rush.

I've already seen a bit of the effect on my emotions--the first time I
traveled here, I got on and off at the old train station, which is now on its
way to demolition. Physical places that hold memories are for me a sort of
safety, and seeing them go is slightly painful. It would be hard, I imagine,
to watch my parent's home be destroyed.

Overall, the move makes me confident of mankind's ability to cope with climate
change. Kiruna is only a small town, and it's moving only a short ways away,
but it is a massive undertaking that requires a lot of money and (perhaps more
difficultly) a lot of cooperation. If Kiruna can do it, larger towns can too,
at least when faced with an obvious existential threat.

~~~
notahacker
I can understand a timescale measured in years is less stressful than one
measured in months, but it sounds almost as if they're going to the opposite
extreme and inducing stress by leaving people for decades in a condemned and
depopulating environment.

A move that's first announced in 2004, doesn't actually start until 2018 and
should be _almost_ completed in 2050, according to the article, sounds
painfully slow.

~~~
rgbrenner
_" condemned and depopulated"_

That sounds like the opposite of the plan in the article:

 _When trying to imagine how Kiruna’s move will work, it helps to think of a
glacier edging slowly down a valley. The ground covered in a century will be
remarkable, but the place won’t change that radically from day to day. The
relocation and redevelopment will be a gradual process occurring over several
generations. A central tenet of the plan is that all development will be
contagious; the new will be built on the edge of the old to prevent the
appearance of a break in the city’s whole.

“One key strategy is leaving no one behind,” Lindstedt says. “The city needs
to connect all current residents during the whole relocation process, rather
than creating a new satellite. New parts of the city are placed far enough
away from the iron ore extraction to reassure residents long-term, but it has
to be close enough to the existing parts to keep the community together.”_

------
mrb
The title is incorrect. It is only the downtown area that will be relocated,
not the whole city. And it will be moved 2.5 km, not 9 km. The downtown area
is currently geographically located on the west edge of the city, and will
move to the east edge of the city, see the map in this article:
[http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ecosistema-urbano-
prequa...](http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ecosistema-urbano-prequalifies-
for-a-planning-competition-in-kiruna-sweden/) I have no idea where the "9 km"
claim comes from. It is not quoted in the article. This is possibly a mix-up
with an unrelated city mentioned in the article (Newtok in Alaska) which is
considering relocating "9 miles" away.

Edit: @troymc: the BBC article is likely incorrect. Notice it quotes no
sources. Maybe it assumed the whole city will move. Or maybe it takes into
account population growth from people moving _from other cities_ to Kiruna,
because of the mine's expansion and increased economic/job opportunities.
Either way, it is pretty obvious from all the relocation maps you find online
that only the western edge of the city will move. Even the rendering at the
original article
[http://nextcity.org/images/made/2033_plan_1200_862.png](http://nextcity.org/images/made/2033_plan_1200_862.png)
shows that only the western edge will disappear (compare it with a Google Maps
satellite view).

~~~
troymc
A BBC News article says, "Over the next 20 years, 20,000 people will move into
new homes, built around a new town centre…" [1]

Wikipedia says the population of Kiruna is 18,148 (from the 2010 census). [2]

In other words, almost everyone in Kiruna is moving, eventually.

[1]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26447507](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26447507)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiruna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiruna)

~~~
eCa
Also according to Wikipedia, it is going to put the city centre here [1].
While big parts of the town will be torn down there are at least some areas
that will remain.

[1]
[https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=67.848757,20.2993544&z=15&ci...](https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=67.848757,20.2993544&z=15&cid=0&q=67%C2%B051%2701.0%22N+20%C2%B018%2702.0%22E&output=classic&dg=opt)

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jnbiche
Kiruna is in an unfortunate predicament, but if I had a company willing to
relocate my home, family, and community 10 miles down the road in order to
save the only job I would ever have in the region (and a well-paying one, at
that), I think I'd be pretty happy about it.

And this is far from the only city to have ever been moved (as the article
noted). A much more tragic story is that of those towns and villages in
Palestine, where communities of over 700,000 people were uprooted and families
forced to relocate wholesale to refugee settlements when Israel was declared
in 1948. These settlements in Gaza and West Bank that have retained the names
of the original communities whence their inhabitants came several generations
before.

~~~
michaelleland
It's in a predicament, but I don't know if I agree that it is unfortunate. It
actually gives the entire town a goal, and I think it's going to revitalize
the town and the people that live in it.

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jahnu
"Meanwhile, the imminent move offers people little incentive to refurbish
their properties and as an inevitable result, the city has become rundown."

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kiruna,+Sweden/@67.8553152...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kiruna,+Sweden/@67.8553152,20.225604,3a,75y,224.04h,91.88t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sBri-9FZzo6uBGKmBEvmqRg!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x45d08e2ae4257c2b:0x4034506de8c8660)

Looking around the place, while it's not exactly Paris it does seem the author
has a different definition of "rundown" than most people.

~~~
michaelleland
It might be rundown compared to some places, but I disagree with the
assessment that town is rundown as a whole. The mine is slowly buying up the
properties that are going to be affected, and are tearing down the buildings.

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Animats
In 1900, Galveston, TX, was moved about 10 feet vertically. After a major
hurricane, a big seawall was built. Then the buildings behind it were jacked
up and the ground filled in,. It worked quite well; when the next hurricane
hit in 1910, the damage was far less.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Chicago too, though for sanitation reasons much more than flooding:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago)

~~~
daemin
Both Prague and Portland were raised by a level. So too have other cities
around the world.

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grecy
> _Located well within the Arctic Circle, the bleak, almost unpopulated region
> around Kiruna_

That sentence makes me think of some of the s__t-hole mining cities and towns
in and around the Arctic around here in Alaska / Yukon and NWT.

The photos in the article show that by North American standards, it's an
extremely beautiful city.

~~~
wtbob
I _think_ only two of those pictures were actual photographs of the city; the
rest were artists' depictions of the new city. Of the two photos, the first is
from a great distance, in winter, and could portray a pretty nasty-looking
place covered in snow; the second is of wilderness on the outskirts (?) of
town, again covered in snow.

No idea if Kiruna is actually a nasty-looking place or not, but it's possible.

~~~
jpatokal
Everything looks nice when covered in snow or filmed from far enough away:
[https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=2...](https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=2018&bih=1157&q=kiruna&oq=kiruna&gs_l=img.3..0l10.887.2040.0.2659.8.7.0.0.0.0.231.805.0j3j1.4.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.60.img..4.4.801.U-GvVTRzVeg)

But more realistically, here's downtown Kiruna today:
[https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiruna#mediaviewer/File:Kiruna...](https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiruna#mediaviewer/File:Kiruna_centrum.jpg)

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ChuckMcM
Interesting. I expect if I were moving a city I would first build a layer for
transport and utilities, and then build the city on top of that. In the past
we've built cites on the ground and then dug sewers and subways etc
underneath. But if you built first a layer that was going to be the
"underneath" of the city, and then built the city on top (including parks and
lawns and what not, you could really do a good job of making sure the
connections were solid.

~~~
michaelleland
The problem, of course, is that there's always a resource that's limited.
There's not unlimited funds to build ideal utilities etc in a small town...

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asgard1024
Reminds me of town of Most (my grandparents lived near):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_%28Most_District%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_%28Most_District%29)

Big part of Most was demolished (and a new center was built about 2-3 km away)
to allow for mining, only the church was moved, which was an interesting
engineering accomplishment.

------
SwellJoe
Ah, yes, "plan B". That was a great episode of the Simpsons'.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash_of_the_Titans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash_of_the_Titans)

On a more serious note, it's kinda scary to what lengths people will go to
continue doing what they've always done, even if it destroys their very homes.
I'm not saying they're wrong to want to keep their jobs, but, humans operate
on such a huge scale and without a lot of foresight, and it's scary to think
of how that will play out with 9 billion humans today and even more tomorrow.

~~~
felixc
> On a more serious note, it's kinda scary to what lengths people will go to
> continue doing what they've always done, even if it destroys their very
> homes.

The thing is, in this case, _not_ continuing to do what they've always done
would effectively also destroy their homes. The mine _is_ the town, and
ceasing production to save the existing town site would just result in a lot
of empty buildings once ~60% of the population has to move elsewhere for work,
and the remainder follow because they were only there to support the miner
population.

~~~
michaelleland
Exactly. In fact, a similar thing happened to Kiruna some years ago, when the
iron price stayed low for some years. The mine slowed production, and house
prices and rent prices followed accordingly. It was a hard time for the
residents here.

The iron price recently dropped, but for many years it's been high, and it is
currently quite hard to find somewhere to live, especially because of the
price controls on rent.

------
phkahler
I like the idea of high density right to the edge of town. You get all the
walkability but also green (or white that far north) space right nearby. I
think the ideal might have some characteristics of fractals to allow all the
dense areas to border on the empty areas.

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gambiting
AARGH - why is this article talking about a city in Sweden, using kilometers
all over the place, and then suddenly, temperature is given in Fahrenheit???

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beat
Towns move. Shawneetown IL was moved a couple of miles away from the Ohio
River, after the flood of 1937 wrecked the original location.

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JoeAltmaier
Huh. Every summer Iowa moves a town of 20,000 people 400+ miles across the
state, on bicycles. Its called RAGBRAI.

------
thrownaway2424
I'm surprised that mining iron in such conditions can be profitable. Isn't it
incredibly abundant (~5% of the earth's crust)?

~~~
dalke
Most of the iron in the crust is bound in silicate or carbonate minerals, and
energetically expensive to extract.

FWIW, the Kiruna orebody is the biggest known continuous body of iron ore in
the world, 4 km wide, 80 meters thick on average, and of unknown length. See
[https://www.lkab.com/en/Future/Urban-
Transformations/Why/Wha...](https://www.lkab.com/en/Future/Urban-
Transformations/Why/What-is-Iron-Ore/The-Ore-in-Kiruna/) .

Or quoting from [http://www.mining-
technology.com/projects/kiruna/](http://www.mining-
technology.com/projects/kiruna/) :

> Since mining began at the site over 100 years ago, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara
> AB (LKAB) has produced over 950Mt of ore, yet only one third of the original
> ore body has been extracted.

~~~
michaelleland
Also, the iron ore in Kiruna is magnetite, and particularly rich in iron. This
allows the iron to be extracted using magnets rather then the chemicals needed
for hematite, the more abundant cousin of magnetite. Also, the trains used to
transport the iron pellets to the coast for sea transport use very little
energy, due to the regenerative braking used during the loaded trip down to
sea level.

~~~
kijin
The part about trains sound really interesting. Do you mean that the energy
gained through regenerative braking while a loaded train moves downhill is
enough to move an empty train back up the mountain?

If so, how do they store the energy? Do the trains carry massive batteries, or
do they draw power from (and contribute back to) the grid?

~~~
dalke
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iore](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iore) \-
"From Riksgränsen on the national border to the Port of Narvik, the trains use
only a fifth of the power they regenerate. The regenerated energy is
sufficient to power the empty trains back up to the national border."

It's pumped into the grid.

~~~
analog31
Wow, like those funicular railways where one car acts as the counterweight for
the other.

~~~
dalke
And where the passengers only want to ride it from the top to the bottom.

~~~
analog31
True. Oddly enough, I've been hiking in regions that were ski resorts during
the winter, and they sometimes ran the chair lifts during the summer. We'd use
them for hiking. There were some published hikes that involved lifts, buses,
trains, etc. Perhaps out of a sense of sportsmanship, we tended to ride down,
but never up.

