Malmö: A City of Ongoing Experimentation
Preamble: In August 2012, Media Evolution’s, The Conf invited me to Malmö, Sweden, to give a talk on my work in China and how to design for trust. It was was my first time in Skåne (southern Sweden), where Malmö is located. The truth is that I didn’t expect to love Malmö as I had already been coming to Stockholm regularly for work since the mid-2000s. So it took me by surprise that I fell in love with Malmö. Every so often, I fall hard for a city. The air, the language, and the people — they become a part of my veins. NYC, Oaxaca, San Diego — I can’t even tell a story about my life without mentioning those places. And Malmö now is one of them.
When I returned to Brooklyn, I excitedly Googled Malmö to learn more about it. But all the recent links portrayed Malmö as a violent city filled with dangerous “immigrants.” I couldn’t find a single story that honored Malmö’s riveting history, irresistible pull, and growth pains, so I decided to write it myself. The beauty of Malmö can only be understood when taken as a whole, not by its pieces. All complex systems deserve to be seen holistically.
The story of Malmö could be told through a grain of sand and a shipyard crane.
When the Danes came to Malmö about 700 years ago, they called it Malmhaug, a pile of sand. By the time the Swedes conquered Skåne in 1658, the pile of sand had become an important city of trade during the early expansion of mercantile capitalism.
When the seas of trade moved to bigger oceans during the Industrial Revolution, Malmö was not to be forgotten. In 1870, Frans Henrik Kockum founded the Kockums Shipyard, making it one of the largest shipyards in the world at the time. And for over 100 years, Kockums created the beasts that roamed the oceans for merchants and nations. The currents carried the ships fattened with gold back to Malmö, turning the shipyard into one of the busiest harbors in Continental Europe.
As the new port city connecting England and Europe, Malmö became the host to new political and cultural ideas in the fin de siècle. Socialism, one of the biggest ideas floating around Europe at the time, came to shore in Sweden by way of August Palm, a tailor from Malmö who was working in Germany and then expelled for rabble-rousing with the Socialists. Inspired by his German comrades, he returned back to his birth city, Malmö, with a vision: transform Sweden into a social democratic country. In 1881, he stepped onto the Kockums port and found an imperfect city bursting at the edges with the capitalists enjoying their profits while the workers toiled away for meager wages. It was to this Malmö that he introduced his form of socialism in a talk on November 6, 7pm, to an audience of 130 people, mostly manual laborers.
The first talk on socialism in Sweden, August’s What Will Social Democrats? departed from traditional Marxism which held that workers had to destroy the state and bourgeoisie apparatus. Instead he believed the state could support workers while upholding property rights and maintaining a capitalist market. He urged people to set aside their fears to imagine a new society.
“And you should not be the least frightened to be called social democrats, because it is no shame to be a socialist. Know that socialist means “society improver” and what can be more beautiful then to make a rotten society better, this society founded on lies and unjust.”
This was an unforeseen mutation of socialism, unapproved by Karl Marx yet stamped with the authenticity of his audience who nodded in agreement with August’s vision for a new society. Little did they know that from that moment on, nothing would ever be the same in Sweden after that night. Ever again. But everyone would have to wait another 50 years to see just how much would change.
For the next few decades, Malmö became a city of experimentation between city leaders, workers, and capitalists. Generating profits by day and building socialism by night, Malmö’s workers implemented a vision for an equitable society creating the country’s first labor movements, workers’ newspaper, and unions. City planners dedicated themselves to designing a solution for the overcrowded slums filled with newly arrived peasants from the countryside and workers. And they succeeded.
Malmö became the model industrial city of both production and culture in Northern Europe. Hosting the 1914 Baltic Exhibition, royalty and business people walked the widened streets of Malmö to gaze at the new canals and parks.
The clouds over Malmö witnessed an ideal balance of majestic brick buildings for the bourgeoisie, planned communities for the workers, and the hundreds of factories spreading ash into the sky. It was a city that welcomed both Adam Smith and Karl Marx. While every else in the world chose sides — the exploits of capitalism or the exhaust of communism — Malmö chose to empower its socialistic mutation started by its deceased cosmopolitan tailor, August Palm. And so Malmö kept experimenting with its social programs, refusing to fall into any idealistic traps of the invisible hand or proletariat rule. Little did Malmö know that its humble pile of sand would soon become the revolutionary sandstorm that would cover the entire country of Sweden.
By the 1930s, the Malmö’s experiment had reached Stockholm. Political leaders looked to Malmö as the blueprint for implementing Folkhemmet (People’s Home), popularly referred to as the “Swedish middle Way” — a precise blend between capitalism and socialism in practice on the city level. Malmö’s Folkhemmet experiment, whose origins can be traced back to same values in August Palm’s fiery speech in 1881, became the model for Sweden’s modern social welfare system. As the country’s focus turned to building a new social democracy, the winds blew east to Stockholm.
The skies over Malmö descended once again in 1970 to embrace a new horizon — Kockums Crane, the largest shipbuilding granty crane in the world standing at 138 meters (453 feet). The crane was Malmö’s solution for generating growth when the market sent signals of the decline of industrial capitalism. And for a decade or so, the last bits of the industrial era squeezed out a few more ships from the Kockums Crane, but even a mass of steel could not shield Malmö from the forces of financial capitalism that no longer depended on ships to carry the expansion of profits.
When the Kockums Shipyard closed in the mid-80’s, Malmö lost its primary industry and went into a deep recession. Suffering the same fate of many industrial cities of the time such as Detroit and NYC, the city quickly deteriorated. All the viral mutations that happen to an inner city blighted by sudden economic withdrawal — poverty, crime, drugs, urban flight—flourished. Those who could run, ran. Those who could move, moved. And as cities surrounding Malmö benefited from the influx of educated migrants, those who stayed in Malmö refer to this period as its darkest days.
Without any ships to build, the Kockums Crane sat idle, along with all the workers of the shipyard. Eventually, the Kockums Crane was sold to a Danish company in the early 90’s. took on its last job in 1997 when engineers used it to install the foundation pillars of the Øresund Bridge that now connects Malmö and Copenhagen. Soon afterwards, the company that owned the crane went bankrupt and sold it to Hyundai from South Korea for $1 who then hired a British/Italian company to dismantle it and reconstruct it in Uslan, South Korea.
It is said that the residents of Malmö cried upon seeing their beloved crane leave for its new home in South Korea, thus acquiring the name, Tears of Malmö. While the crane symbolizes the death of an industry that created the soul of Malmö, it also symbolizes a new Malmö that would reinvent itself in a post-industrial age. Over the next few decades the city welcomed people from countries that had never seen a wolf’s winter, tasted schnapps, or touched democracy. The Tears of Malmö had to travel around the world so that it could bring the world to Malmö.
More than 300 years after Scania became Swedish territory, Malmö is finally coming into its own, again. In an era where packets travel faster by cable than by ships, the skies still sustain the heart of Malmö. Instead of building ships to send out to the sea, the clouds now bring in new residents from all around the world. For bringing in new people and ideas is a skill Malmö has honed from its early days as a port city.
An invisible crane still oversees the city and if you stay just long enough, you’ll feel it when you walk around and talk to the people who make the city come alive. Malmö may be Sweden’s third largest city, but it exceeds for being the most welcoming, diverse, and exciting city in all of Scandinavia. Now home to immigrants from over 170 countries, the infamous social welfare system is starting to show cracks. But I imagine Malmö must feel similar to what August Palm witnessed when he stepped off the ship from Germany. Today, stepping off the train in Malmö’s city center at Centralstationen, I see a proud city negotiating the complexities of openness. I hear the privileged speaking of innovation. I feel the desire of those who are step behind the knowledge economy trying to find their way into it.
The Malmö of today contains a different set of complexities than the Malmö of August Palm, but the city is still the living lab that it once was. Except that this time, the experiments aren’t just for Sweden, but for the world. Cities everywhere are struggling to find new ways to handle the opportunities and traumas of an on-demand economy unfolding amidst massive global instability and inequality. The world needs human-scale cities like Malmö to learn from because mega-cities are too slow to experiment with. This particular lab may be missing its hallmark tool, the Kockums Crane, but cities are more than landmarks, they are made of the people who live in them.
Here are 14 instagram posts from my time in Malmö that capture why I think Malmö is the most awesome Scandinavian city.
1. Malmö is not Copenhagen.
Malmö is overshadowed by the fancier and more famous city, Copenhagen that overflows with historical beauty. While the two cities are only half hour apart, but they are a world away. Malmö used to be Danish territory and now the two cities are connected by the Øresund Bridge that was built in 2000. Malmö inherited the openness of Danish culture, but it’s now doing a better job of being open. Denmark used to he known for being an open culture to immigrants, but over the last 20 years, the politicians have turned it into a country that will never let a non-white Dane forget that they are an outsider.
Every time I speak to immigrants in Copenhagen, even non-ethnic Danes who are born there, they always tell me, “I was born here but I will never call myself a Dane.” Lars AP wrote a book about the unfriendliness of Danes. In Fucking Flint, he asks why Danish people are known to be so unfriendly.
I find it miraculous that despite the ups and downs Malmö has encountered with its immigration experiments and multiculturalism policies, the city is still open to outsiders. That, to me is one of the beauties of Malmö.
2. Residents of Malmö like Malmö.
Every single taxi driver I spoke to, whether they were an immigrant or born in Sweden, they loved the changes happening in Malmö. Taxi drivers are some of the most knowledgable residents of a city. Go to any city and speak to 10 drivers and you’ll get a good idea of the city’s rhythm and issues. Every single driver told me about the problems Malmo used to experience, but all of them were positive about the future.
As several people have told me,
“Malmö was a shithole 10 years ago.”
And within 10 years, the change has been astounding even for those who live here:
“Malmö has not initiated change — Malmo is already a transformed city. It has happened before in the history of Malmo, but never in a shorter time, The contrasts are striking, both in our near-memories and in what we can trace in the city environment. Visible contrasts tell a bright new story of the new Malmö. (Därför Malmo! 2002, 212)
3. Malmö is Scandinavia’s most diverse city.
Over 40% of its residents have immigrant backgrounds and over 25% of its residents were born in another country. Malmö is also home to the largest Muslim population in Scandinavia,
This is not to say that Malmö is perfect. Like any other city, immigrants struggle to find a voice and to feel like they are part of a growing city.
Here’s an excerpt from a Washington Post article on Timbuktu, a Swedish rapper from Malmö:
Across Europe, societies that were once solidly white and Christian are being recast in a multicultural light. The arrival of large numbers of people from the Middle East, East Asia and Africa — many European countries now have minority populations of around 10 percent — is pushing aside old concepts of what it means to be French or German or Swedish.
In Sweden, nowhere is the change happening faster than in Malmo, the country’s third-largest city behind Stockholm and Goteborg. It is a gritty shipyard town of about 265,000 people. Once a major industrial center that drew people from abroad with the prospect of jobs, Malmo has lately fallen on hard times as factories have closed.
About 40 percent of Malmo’s population is foreign-born or has at least one foreign-born parent. The bulk of foreign-born people come from the former Yugoslavia, Iran, Iraq and the Horn of Africa. Among school-age children, 50 percent have at least one foreign-born parent, and analysts project that the number will soon reach 60 percent.
The city’s official Web site boasts that its inhabitants come from 164 countries and speak 100 languages.
4. Malmö is the home to the world’s shortest World Trader Center.
Not joking. It’s 6 floors and it doesn’t look like they are adding any more floors to the building.
5. Malmö is also home to the tallest building in Sweden — the Turning Torso!
It is also the loneliest building in the world.
6. Malmö has the most beautifully non-pretentious nude spa in the world that sits on the ocean, Ribersgorgs Kallbadhus.
Imagine this: males go to the left, females go to the right, you strip down in the lockeroom, you are fully nude — dangling bits and v’jay-jay explosed, you walk out onto a pier, you go into the sauna, you get hot, you walk out and dip yourself into the ocean, swim for a bit, sunbathe, and then repeat until tired.
And for the real Swedes or non-prudes, you walk into the co-ed sauna, where you mingle with strangers or bump into your neighbors.
7. Malmö is home to the Slagthuset — the only events center in the world that makes you want to eat cured meat the minute you enter.
I attribute a large part of my Malmö love to the Slagthuset that won me over through my my olfactory bulbs. I spent 2 days at the Slagthuset. The building’s smell was making me perpetually carnivorous. My chemoreceptors were on fire.
During talks I felt like killing a pig and it was hard to focus on conversations because I was craving cured meat. We were only fed cookies and coffee :(
Slagthuset’s history as a slaughterhouse lives on in its odors; its historical storytelling through our limbic systems. How lovely to be in a space that makes you pick up information through your nose, instead of your eyes. We often emphasize the visual aspects of learning, but smelling helps us with associative learning and emotions. I forever now associate Malmö with yummy cured meat!
Slagthuset brought together my love for urban buildings with stories, info processing through quantum physics, and olfaction processes!
8. The CEO of DesignTorget, Pål Kårfalk, will reply to you if you send him a picture of you shopping at their Malmö location!
Vinay and I passed out from a day of shopping at DesignTorget. We took a picture of this epic moment. Vinay sent the picture to Pal, the CEO of DesignTorget, and he replied to us! This only happens a the Malmö location of DesignTorget — it’s a secret internal policy.
Pål Kårfalk also tweets at doggies who balance stuff from DesignTorget on their heads. After my dog, Elle, balanced a pen from DesignTorget on her head, Pål Kårfalk replied to Vinay who tweeted about it!
10. Malmö has the most amazing outdoor concert sound system and their outdoor concerts are totally free!
Visit Malmö’ during its annual Malmo Festival. The sound system is the best I’ve heard. It was better than any NYC or SF outdoor concert.
It was extra special to see both The Hives and Timbuktu. I’ve always admired Sweden’s education system for the emphasis it puts on music. Sweden has some of the most amazing producers. Also, Timbuktu is even more amazing to listen to in person with Malmö amazing outdoor sound system.
11. Ubisoft Massive is based in Malmö.
Historical gaming company — the first to embed advertisements in game (thanks Vinay for sharing). Who’s ready for Far Cry 3?
12. Mystery writer, Henning Mankell, sets many of his stories in Malmö.
Manell’s books give readers a glimpse of 1990s and early 2000s Malmö when the city was still recovering from recession, post-industrial transitions, and major immigration debates. In Faceless Killers, Mankell weaves in stories about immigration policy and race relations into a tight mystery plot. And before you’re done with the book, be careful because the next book in the series, Troubled Man, will take you on a submarine fantasy.
For the Mankell fans — Mixed Reality 2012 is taking place in Ystad, the home of Kurt Wallender, the detective in Faceless Killers.
13. Malmö is the home to Svensson, a company that designs clothing for an understated yet precious kind of masculinity.
Feminism liberated men to embrace a diff kind of masculinity and this is evident in the Svensson brand. Svensson’s attention to detail reveals their nuanced understanding of the male body. One of their jeans is named after Magnus Thure — a kinda prototype Svensson man.
The founders of Svensson are two brothers who started out designing club posters and DJing, then they moved into magazine publishing and now they have their own storefront in Malmö. Their clothing evolved throughout the years to become more minimalistic. They are now selling at Barneys.
14. Malmö is home to a conference that is brazen enough to call itself, The Conference so that it will not to be confused with or comparable to any other conferences. Because it is you know, The Conference with a capital C.
One of the conference co-organizers hosted a crayfish party at his house! Who does that now? I mean who really wants a bunch of jet-lagged speakers at their house? Obviously only a conference organizer who lives in Malmö
15. Lastly and most importantly (for me), Malmö will be home to Eurovision 2013. I hope my favorite Eurovision star, Verka Serduchka will make a special appearance just for me — with some magical thinking and help from friends in Malmö I will be there on May 14–16.
ADDEMDUM ADDED IN 2016
15. Malmö is home to the best restaurant in Scandinavia and certainly one of the best in the world: Saltimporten Canteen.
Only open during weekdays for 2 hours (12–2pm) with 1 dish a day, this is worthy of a train ride over from Stockholm or any European city. Opened by several chefs, one who used to be a chef at Copenhagen’s NOMA, the uniqueness of their approach to food design blazes through each meal.
They are the epitome of my dream meal — chefs who offer food for the peoples while challenging palettes with local ingredients. They’ve designed a restaurant where a doctor to a police-person to a locksmith can be found dining together at the same table. The chefs have truly created a restaurant that honors everyone’s ability to extend their palette while honoring the inner foodie in all humans, regardless of privilege. I dream of their food when I’m in Brooklyn. And I can’t wait for my annual workcation in August in Malmö where I structure all my weekdays around their lunch hours. When I have to make choices every second in my life, it’s an honor to temporarily live in a city where the choices have been reduced for me down to only the best options in the world.
Tips:
- They publish their weekly menu on their instagram at the beginning of each week.
- Don’t worry non-meat eaters — they offer 1 vegetarian meal that stays the same all week and 75% of the time it’s amazing.
- Order a glass of wine with your meal to feel a little extra fancy
- Take your meal to sit on the dock by the waters on a sunny day
- Get their special soft-serve dessert after your meal.
I love them so much that I made a movie to honor their signature #leekash that they add to many of their dishes. If you’re Swedish, you’ll appreciate the musical additional of Öppna landskap, Ulf Lundell, När Jag Kysser Havet.
