Hammarby Sjöstad is a new district on the waterfront in the center of Stockholm, Sweden. The district will offer 10,000 apartments for 25,000 residents. From day one, the City of Stockholm has imposed tough environmental requirements on buildings, infrastructural solutions and the traffic environment. To obtain these goals, integrated planning, innovative solutions and new technologies have been necessary. The project runs until 2016, and today half of the city area is done. The Project Management Office, which has run the project from the beginning, has made sure to achieve all environmental requirements. GlashusEtt, the environmental information centre of Hammarby Sjöstad, provides lectures on sustainable city planning and encourages inhabitants to change their ways of life to be more sustainable.Due to this sustainable city concept, Hammarby Sjöstad has come to serve as a role model for urban development projects all around the world.

The City, in a innovative way has put strict demands on the developers, and itself, to create a sustainable city area. In Hammarby Sjöstad, the environmental program and the eco-cycle model were integrated in the planning process. Overall goals include:-Reducing Hammarby Sjöstad?s total impact on the environment by half when compared to any similar, conventially developed new city district-Recycling and returning to the area in the form of renewable energy, all waste and waste water coming from the inhabitants of Hammarby Sjöstad.To reach these goals the City and the developers had to find new methods of planning and constructing new technologies and eco-solutions in the newly devleped residences and buildings.

Since GlashusEtt opened in 2002, the information centre has had about 40,000 visitors from all over the world. The district of Hammarby Sjöstad will be home to an estimated 25,000 residents, and has been a source of inspiration to many urban development projects, including: the Toronto (Canada) Waterfront, London's New Wembley, and a number of cities/city areas in China.

As a close-looped urban community, there are great benefits to the economy, to human health, and to the local and global environment, in terms of reducing dramatically both energy costs and emissions.

The project has worked with the energy company Fortum, a vast number of developers, eco-technology companies, and the Stockholm Water Company to make sure that all aspects of clean energy are taken care of. A joint proposal for the provision of energy, water and waste-treatment was initially developed by the lead agencies: Stockholm Energi, Stockholm Water and SKAFAB (the city's Waste Recycling Company). There is great emphasis placed on the importance of collaboration and synergistic thinking between these agencies, which each have responsibility for different segments of the closed-loop system.Hammarby Sjöstad is a full-scale, living proof of the fact that the usage of clean energy and energy saving solutions don?t have to increase project cost. Hammarby Sjöstad is contributing significantly by serving as a role model for the planning of new urban areas. Integrated planning, innovative eco-solutions, and technologies and environmental demands can, and should, be used in every urban development project.

As an urban ecological district, Hammarby Sjöstad has adopted the practice of circular metabolism to facilitate the accomodation and efficient use of the resources required by residents and the resulting waste. Individual households dispose of their solid waste into a vacuum-based underground collection system that allows for separating the waste into organic, recycleable and other forms. Combustible garbage is processed and returned to the community as electricity and hot water. About 1,000 apartments have installed stoves that use biogas derived from the district's wastewater. The public transportation of the area is also fueled with biogas. Additionally, the goal is to reclaim about one-half of the nitrogen and water, and about 95% of phosphorus, in the wastes in order to use these as fertilizer for agricultural activities in the area. Further, when the project is complete, the Hammarby Sjostad city aims to achieve a compact urban community served by a fast train and pedestrial and bicycle-friendly environment in order to reduce the need for cars within the city.All of these steps, taken together, will ensure a healthier and more environmentally-friendly community, with significant cost savings for all residents, the advancement of new clean energy technologies, and major lessons learned/experiences that can be replicated in other cities and communities around the world.

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Offers great example and potential for closed-loop economies in other towns and cities around the world. Such projects can significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels, help to mainstream renewable energy and energy efficiency, while also improving human health and local, regional environments, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This project will be home to approximately 25,000 residents, 40,000 people from around the world have been to the visitors center to learn about this community and its use of clean energy, and the project is already inspiring developments in other cities around the world.