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Zorro

(15,691 posts)
Sat Mar 15, 2014, 12:37 PM Mar 2014

Kiruna: How to move a town two miles east

This spring work will begin to move Sweden's northernmost town two miles to the east. Over the next 20 years, 20,000 people will move into new homes, built around a new town centre, as a mine gradually swallows the old community. It's a vast and hugely complicated undertaking.

"When people hear that we're designing, creating and building a whole new city from scratch they think we're doing a utopian experiment," says architect Mikael Stenqvist.

But there's too much at stake to think of it as an experiment, he says.

"If this project goes wrong, the survival of Kiruna, its inhabitants and its economy is at stake. That gives us great concern - unlike any other project we work on."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26447507

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Kiruna: How to move a town two miles east (Original Post) Zorro Mar 2014 OP
We've done it in the US. Igel Mar 2014 #1

Igel

(35,191 posts)
1. We've done it in the US.
Sat Mar 15, 2014, 02:18 PM
Mar 2014

There were some towns along the Mississippi that faced flooding if the levees failed. Or when the levees were opened, sacrificing those towns to reduce the flood level and keep levees in more built-up areas from flooding.

It turned out to be cheaper to buy the land and houses and move the town or two than to continue to repair the houses that the government flooded. There were scant politics involved because of the number of people involved and the absence of obvious "hot button" issues that could come into play.

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