Is a New Vision for Stockholm Meant to Sway or Scare?

While planners, designers, and officials in cities such as Los Angeles seek ways to blend "elegant density" into their existing urban fabric to accommodate the increased demand for urban living, a recent proposal by Stockholm-based architecture firm visiondivision, may set back such efforts in their city.

The plan, called "Stockholm Stacked," calls for "a change in planning regulations to eliminate height restrictions on courtyard typologies" in an effort to "build where most people actually wants [sic] to live." The plan responds to a real problem for the increasingly segregated city in which demand for limited housing available in the core of the city is driving up prices and forcing development and low- and middle-income residents to its outskirts.

However, visiondivision's plan, featuring dramatic renderings with foreboding skies and clumsy towers poking out of Stockholm's courtyards, may serve to turn off more people from finding ways to increase density in the core of the city than it will convince.

Thanks to Brent Toderian