Frihamnen (The Free Port) – is an area of Gothenburg which until the decline of the shipbuilding industry in the 1980s had an important role in the city’s industrial sector. Since then, the area has been underdeveloped and an unused resource. There are large areas of centrally located land close to the river which hold great potential for creating attractive homes and workplaces for many people.
At a workshop at Älvstranden Utveckling AB (the River Bank Development Corporation), on the 17th of February, the STEP UP partners of Gothenburg: Gothenburg City Council representatives, Älvstranden and SP teamed up to discuss how the climate Strategy objectives and the vision for Älvstaden (the river city vision) can be linked with the Free Port challenges, and how pipeline projects from the STEP UP project could be involved in the process.
Frihamnen
Håkan Perslow, Project Manager at SP, who conducted the workshop said – "Since such genuine, good work has already been done, with clear objectives and strategic areas identified, we will start by looking at how we can reconcile a number of ongoing processes. In a later step we can use a Logical Framework Approach (LFA) and identify projects that we can continue working with. There is no lack of strategies and processes, instead there is so much going on, and everyone wants to engage in the building of the new area."
These are busy days for the Frihamnen Group at the Gothenburg’s City Planning Department. Mia Edström, Project Manager for Frihamnen, described where they are in the process of regeneration of the new district - “We are currently working on a programme with an overall framework for how the land shall be used. This will be delivered by April 2014 and will outline an initial expansion phase, for the time until 2021”. There are several strategic issues that have to be addressed in planning of the new area, e.g. to what extent can Frihamnen be made a car free district and still solve transport and city logistical issues? Frihamnen also has physical barriers that the City planners must overcome; natural barriers like the river on one side, man-made ones like the motorway on the other side and the bridge over the river.
After the Frihamnen workshop, the STEP UP team at SP have collected the results and merged them into a list of possible future projects in the area which will be presented to the Frihamnen group at the City of Gothenburg very soon.