Everyone’s talking about a smarter, more sustainable future. This is taking shape in Brunnshög in southern Sweden. And it’s being created around the people who will live there, focusing on their future needs.

In Karlshamn, a collaboration between several organisations has created a sustainable, intelligent district heating system. The system is controlled using the latest AI technology and is constantly evolving to create a future-proof sustainable energy supply.

The village of Kivik in south-east Sweden is where you’ll find the new residential area Tvärpilen, which combines beauty, sustainability and responsibility in perfect harmony.

At times of more extreme weather caused by climate change, the downside of dense cities with few green spaces and more paved surfaces is evident; extreme heat, flooding and reduced biodiversity. Blue Green City Lab is a test bed that evaluates new and proven ‘blue-green’ solutions to mitigate these effects.

The renovation of the rundown area of Vårsången in Malmö has generated many positive effects. People previously moved to Vårsången because of a lack of other options. Today, they move there because it’s an attractive district where residents want to live. This has increased property values significantly, proving that social and environmental investment is a good deal in the long run.

There is broad consensus that we cannot continue with business as usual if we are to achieve both a sustainable and prosperous future. DigIT Hub is an initiative that helps companies and the public sector digitalise in a unique, collaborative way.

Siptex is the world’s first large-scale facility of its kind. It sorts textiles by colour and fibre composition using near-infrared light, allowing it to handle large flows and produce textile fractions suited to different recycling processes.

Ohboy the Bicycle House in Malmö is designed, built and owned by architects Hauschild + Siegel. Owning the process from drawing board to finished product has allowed the architects control the entire concept and ensure it meets their vision of a smarter way to live.

With its 9500 sqm the Botanical Roof Garden of Augustenborg is an ever-evolving testbed of urban greening. Here you get to see more than 20 different solutions for greening a rooftop, from the most extensive green roofs to biosolar solutions and even a rooftop kitchen garden.

In the Evolution Road project, the next generation of ERS (Electric Road System) is being demonstrated and tested at a test site in Lund. ERS provides a charging infrastructure for all kinds of electric vehicles – with benefits such as longer driving range, seamless charging and reduced need for heavy batteries.

MAX IV is a world-leading accelerator physics laboratory for research into synchrotron radiation. It is also unique in its ambitious sustainability aims. Its smart solutions in energy efficiency, biological diversity and waste management make it the first building to receive the BREEAM-SE environmental classification.

Ronneby municipality is investing in Cradle to Cradle® as a method to achieve a circular economy, healthy materials, diversity and renewable energy. The method has been implemented in Hulta preschool, creating an environment of conscious material choices together with a stimulating outdoor environment and teaching.

The new district of Brunnshög in the city of Lund will be home to the world’s largest LTDH network (low-temperature district heating). The heating network is based almost entirely on fossil-free surplus heat recovered from MAX IV, another of Lund’s many innovative facilities.

Helsingborg’s international H22 City Expo in 2022, along with its preparatory work, is an ambitious investment that aims to lead the way to smarter, more sustainable urban life and planning. The goal is for Helsingborg to be one of Europe’s most innovative cities in 2022.

By unlocking traditional business models within waste management, Verapark is an innovation platform in which the business sector, the public sector and universities collaborate to develop new ideas for recycling and upcycling waste.

In the Drottninghög neighbourhood of Helsingborg in southern Sweden a transformation is underway, from a run-down district to an attractive, sustainable part of the city. This change is based on close dialogue between residents, real-estate companies and the City of Helsingborg.

The BiodiverCity project in Malmö demonstrates the benefits of green roofs and other green areas in urban environments. Not only do they promote wellbeing, but they also help increase biodiversity and other important ecosystem services.

In Kristianstad, one of the most polluted areas in southern Sweden has been decontaminated as part of a project to achieve a toxin-free environment. Toxins were reduced by 99.9% and the area is now the development site for a new residential district.

The new city district of Oceanhamnen in Helsingborg has created a solution for separating and recovering different kinds of waste water and food waste at source. This leads to sustainable reuse of resources through Sweden’s first recovery plant, Reco Lab.

Linero, a district of Lund in southern Sweden, is a successful smart city upgrade project focused on improving around 800 apartments built in the 1970s to create more energy-efficient, eco-friendly housing.

The Augustenborg district in Malmö was ambitiously rebuilt to manage flooding problems and socioeconomic challenges. As a result of solutions based on ecosystem services, the area is now an attractive neighbourhood and an example of a successful sustainable makeover of an urban district.

The municipality-owned waste plant NSR works with developing all stages of waste management for six municipalities in southern Sweden. NSR refers to its holistic approach to waste management as ‘from table to soil’, which incorporates various aspects of recycling, from smart kerbside waste collection to turning food waste into fuel and biofertilizer.

Over the past 15-20 years, Lomma Hamn has been transformed from an industrial harbor into an attractive, appreciated, and accessible residential area. Lomma municipality has not only taken care of an environmental debt and created a well-known brand but also experienced a 30 percent increase in population compared to before the redevelopment.

The Filborna plant is a waste-to-energy plant which combusts sorted waste from the nearby region. It supplies approximately 40 percent of Helsingborg’s heating demand. The plant features a state-of-the art, combined flue gas cleaning and condensation system to ensure high efficiency whilst meeting stringent emission requirements.

Malmö’s Western Harbour, previously a run-down shipyard and industrial area covering 187 hectares, is now a vibrant ‘city within a city’, with a university, around 10,000 residents and more than 16,000 people working there (figure from 2016). The area has its own systems for managing its energy supply and waste treatment, and car traffic in the area has been minimised as an environmentally sustainable approach to urban planning and mobility.

The digestion facility for the production of biogas is one of the bigger in Sweden, treating about 85,000 tons of organic material every year.