The Contradicitons of Södra Sofielund
A picturesque garden city or a gritty ghetto? Both can be claimed about Södra Sofielund, a small neighbourhood in Malmö where high rates of criminality and poverty go side by side with idyllic homes of the intellectual middle class.
Rosenlundsgatan is a nice little street with row houses and small detached houses from the early 1900’s with hollyhocks on the front and gardens on the back. The street is also in the top three of places with lots of car break-ins in the city. One street away you find the home of Malmö’s mayor. Yet another street away is Sevedsplan, an area with low-rise residentials from the mid 1900’s. It’s one of the poorest parts of town, and by Swedish measures a gritty place.
There is a gentrification process going on among the small houses, but it is going surprisingly slowly. Even in the more idyllic parts there is still a big diversity among in the population. Södra Sofielund is one of the most central parts of Malmö where you can get a house with a garden, and the house prices have been going up a lot during the last years. The neighbourhood is located next to Möllevången, a young, hip and vibrant part of town, and lots of the not-so-young-anymore-but-still-claiming-to-be-hip people from Möllevången dream of a small house with a garden at Sofielund. I’m one of them.
View more photos from Södra Sofielund here.
Tags: Gentrification, Malmö
zvi says:
“not-so-young-anymore-but-still-claiming-to-be-hip people” also known as “grups” – see this amusing article from NY Magazine: http://nymag.com/news/features/16529/
I’m one of them too!
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:44 am
amadou says:
delete the first picture
April 6th, 2011 at 2:20 am