Letter to the editor. Nacka Grace gives me hope for a more beautiful city

Stockholm builders have a premium function over well -being for almost 70 years. Identic, gray cubes without beauty, ornaments, inheritance and joy have filled both suburbs and city center. The houses are as sterile as hospitals.

We live in an industrial slaughterhouse. Big screens showing: Here I will eat, here I will sleep, here I will die. But where should I laugh? Where should I love? Where should I dream?

Not in Hagastaden. Not in northern Djurgårdsstaden. And really not in Nacka beach. I personally have to escape to Djurgården or Old Town to even breathe.

Recently when I went Through Nacka’s all new buildings, I was filled with the anxiety of the total evil and human contempt required to construct these prison -like buildings.

Genuine evil is to take something beautiful and to destroy, distort it and feel perverse pride in it. In order to destroy something as beautiful, historically and meaningful as Stockholm, the deepest evil is required. Passivity is also what causes evil to thrive – and I have been sitting still for too long.

On the bench, at Djurgården, I have looked at when my beautiful city was destroyed. Stone for stone. Concrete piece for concrete bit.

But on this turn Through Nacka I saw it: an oasis in the desert. A northern star. A hope for something new. Nacka Grace – not perfect, but everything I could ever wish for.

I didn’t see a backdrop, a « Disneyland » or a pastiche. I saw pastel -colored dreams and people who struggled to bring us closer to the breaking point between fairy tales and reality. Where history meets everyday life. Where I can breathe, laugh, love and live.

Then I saw the next block. A house that splits color with baby spy. The facade covered with nothing except large asymmetrical flat windows. Gray. Cool. Inhuman. I turned and went home.

Is Stockholm The Nordic region’s response to Venice? No – a single long abuse of nature, culture and us who live here.

Let’s not make Nacka Grace a reminder of what we could have had, but a guide on what we can get.

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