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Can Reykjavík stop the sprawl?

Reykjavík’s new municipal plan for 2010—2030

Reykjavík has been a desirable address when Icelanders choose where to make their homes, but the capital region’s influx of residents is now predicted to slow. Statistics Iceland projects that by 2030 the capital region’s population will increase by 25,000 people.


Author: Sigríður Maack

That’s an annual increase of 0.9% compared to 1.6% per year over the last 20 years. The coming decades are expected to bring a considerable slowdown to the city’s growth, which is one of the reasons for an emphasis on building densification in Reykjavík’s new municipal plan for 2010–2030.

The new plan is available as a elegantly designed print edition from Crymogea publishers, full of diagrams and clearly presented texts. Atli Hilmarsson’s studio handled the book’s layout and design. It took several years to gather all the information that went into the plan, as well as the expert work of many specialists in their fields. The municipal plan is also available for download at the city’s website and issuu.com. In this article we’ll look at a few key elements.

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Photograph by Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson

Definitive guidelines

In its essence, the municipal plan is a consensus among citizens on how the city will be developed. This includes a strategy used to determine planning decisions. One of the objectives of the new municipal plan was to strengthen its role as a control mechanism. To this end there’s been an effort to reassert the municipal plan as the general guidelines for shaping and developing the city’s building. Its entire presentation centers on making information as accessible to citizens as possible. There were also various procedural changes, departments were merged to support better workflow, active citizen participation was promoted with regular open neighbourhood meetings and cross-party cooperation was encouraged. As a result, the new municipal plan covers not only where and how much can be built, but also what the possibilities are when it comes to decisions regarding the city’s development. It seeks to answer questions like which planning options are the most cost-effective. What kind of neighborhoods do we want to create? What areas do we want to protect? In this way, the new municipal plan is actually addressing how we transform Reykjavík into a better city.

The 90/10 option

The new municipal plan is the first not to call for new suburbs. Instead, the goal is to work towards a 90/10 ratio in building densification, meaning 90% of new construction will be in within urban areas of the city. The remaining 10% will go towards construction in unfinished suburbs like Úlfarsárdalur. Although the 90/10 ratio is based on a feasibility study, this course of action has come under fire. One critique points out that construction in an urban setting requires modified procedures, resulting in increased building costs.

90:10 leidin

Illustration : Atli Hilmarsson Studio

Páll Hjaltason, the city’s director of Environment and Planning when the plan was released, was asked how the city intended to realize this kind of proposal.

“We know that urban densification can’t be achieved without some growing pains. And with new construction in urban areas we mustn’t lose sight of the municipal plan’s objective to support integrity in the built environment. We have to be responsible when it comes to the big decisions that affect us all.”

Páll reiterates that the 90/10 option was based on a feasibility study and that it’s the result of cross-party consensus. Other ratios were considered, but they included the continued construction of new neighbourhoods. It became a foregone conclusion that the only responsible way forward, considering factors like pollution and long-term costs, was to undertake systematic efforts for urban densification.

Íbúðarbyggð til ársins 2030 - Lykiluppbyggingarsvæði íbúðarhúsnæðis.

Densification in Reykjavík’s new municipal plan for 2010–2030. / Illustration : Atli Hilmarsson Studio

How hard and fast are the municipal plan’s guidelines in reality? Isn’t there the risk of shifting political tides impacting the policies?

“It’s obviously a minor miracle that the plan was passed with cross-party consensus. This is the first time in history it’s happened. People put their differences aside and listened to one another to arrive at a democratic outcome. But when it comes to whether the policies can be altered, then the answer is that it’s not possible to enact irrevocable planning. This is an unending process. That said, this work is based on a great deal of research and information. In order to make substantial changes to the strategy, there would have to be a valid argument.”…

Read our full in-depth analysis of the new Reykjavík’s new municipal plan for 2010—2030 in the latest issue of HA.

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