Arne Kaijser

City-building regimes in post-war Stockholm

IN Stockholm, as in most other big or medium-sized cities in the West, the last 150–200 years have brought about a tremendous expansion and transformation of the city region. These revolutionary changes in size, distribution, density, and structural build-up of the region have been neither smooth nor linear processes. On the contrary, the trajectory of this urban morphological transformation passed through distinctive phases. One common way to describe this discontinuous story is to focus on shifts in transport technology. A first stage can be characterized by a fast and concentrated growth, which was propelled by new inter-urban transportation systems—primarily railways and steamboats. These systems dramatically increased the nodal character of large cities. However, there was no parallel development of intra-urban transportation, which led to a concentrated settlement pattern. This stage could thus be called the walking city. With the introduction of horse-pulled and especially electric tramways, the boundaries of the old central city could be broken and new settlement areas were built along the new communication arteries. However, it was not only the new transportation systems that were responsible for this development. The new capacity to transmit energy and information in lines and pipes over great distances also contributed to it. We can call this stage the tramway city. The flexibility of the car in transporting people and things paved the way for the next phase of city-metamorphoses, This article was written within the research project “Households and Urban Structures for Sustainable Cities,” HUSUS, funded by Formas and VINNOVA.

The making of Europe’s critical infrastructure : Common connections and shared vulnerabilities

The Making of Europes Critical Infrastructure : Common Connections and Shared Vulnerabilities

Natural Gas in Cold War Europe: The Making of a Critical Infrastructure

On January 1, 2006, Russian gas company Gazprom hastily decided to interrupt its delivery of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine. During a few dramatic days the Russian move raised concerns in large parts of Europe, since the interruption to Ukraine also had a direct effect on the gas supply to countries located further downstream the same pipeline. On January 2, gas companies in Hungary Slovakia, and Austria reported a drastic drop in pressure — at a time of peak winter demand for natural gas. The crisis threatened the steady supply of electricity and heat to a vast number of industrial enterprises, power plants, hospitals, schools, households, and other gas users.

Precursors of the IT Nation: Computer Use and Control in Swedish Society, 1955-1985

This paper is a presentation of a research project that aims at writing the history of computing in Sweden in the mainframe age from a user perspective. Rather than beginning with the history of hardware, this project takes as its point of departure the way in which actors in different sectors of society used computer technology in order to achieve a higher degree of control over crucial processes, whether through electronic data processing systems, process control or technical/scientific computation.

Europe’s Critical Infrastructure and Its Vulnerabilities: Promises, Problems, Paradoxes

Critical infrastructure (CI) can be damaged, destroyed, or disrupted by deliberate acts of terrorism, natural disasters, negligence, accidents, computer hacking, criminal activity, and malicious behaviour. To save the lives and property of people at risk in the EU [European Union]… any disruptions or manipulations of CI should, to the extent possible, be brief, infrequent, manageable, geographically isolated… The recent terrorist attacks in Madrid and London have highlighted the risk of terrorist attacks against European infrastructure. The EU’s response must be swift, coordinated, and efficient.1

Logistics of War

“I saw immediately that something terrible had happened here. He was purple in the face, his pulse hardly countable. I had a desperate man in front of me.”1

Networked Food Economy

Sunday, July 7, 1907. In response to an escalating labor conflict, Dutch army and naval forces entered the Rotterdam harbor in the estuaries of the Rhine and Meuse Rivers. At stake was the pneumatic pumping of bulk grain from sea vessels to river barges. Compared to the traditional manual unloading of grain sacks, the new harbor infrastructure promised to save 94 percent of the labor previously needed and boost Rotterdam’s grain trade. The German milling trade association (Verein deutscher Handelsmuller), for which Rotterdam was a major transit node, and the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce promoted the new infrastructure. A few grain companies started to use it, but most preferred the old system— until the labor conflict got out of hand. Port workers called the new machines “bread robbers”: They sucked the lifeblood out of workers as they sucked grain out of ships. A first strike in 1905 seemed successful. When a few grain companies again started to use pneumatic unloaders in 1907, another boycott followed. Now violence escalated. Workers attacked the grain ship SS Hillhouse to assault strike breakers brought in by the companies. Port worker Hein Mol remembered how “in blind anger the workers hit on the strike breakers, there was no pardon. Some of them jumped overboard in mortal fear … many paid with broken limbs. The ones that did not jump were simply thrown over. The screaming was terrible. One policeman was knifed, others surrendered their sabers and begged for mercy.”1 The Mayor declared a state of siege and sent for the nation’s navy and cavalry. Grain trade companies closed ranks and rapidly introduced grain elevators to break the revolt. Further worker resistance proved futile. By 1913 virtually all grain that entered Rotterdam was unloaded pneumatically.

Manipulating Space & Time

In central St. Petersburg, on the northern bank of the Neva, there is a railroad station. It is a fairly small one, with only a few tracks, but it has a particular place in Russian history: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin arrived here in spring 1917 to initiate the Great Socialist October Revolution. The Finland station can be regarded as the physical place of a new era’s arrival in Russia. To the Finland Station was the title of American historian Edmund Wilson’s classic study of the evolution of socialist and revolutionary thinking in Europe, indicating that it was a long and troublesome journey, metaphorically speaking, that eventually led Lenin to get off the train here.1

Europe’s Infrastructure Vulnerabilities : Comparisons and Connections

This book has investigated the historical shaping of critical transnational infrastructure in Europe, its associated vulnerabilities, and its intertwine ment with broader processes of European integration and fragmentation. The chapters in the three parts have scrutinized these issues from different thematic angles and in a broad range of geographical and temporal settings. While each study has generated intriguing insights in its own right, the range of empirical cases has also set the stage for comparative and connecting observations. This final chapter sets out to harvest from our case studies by focusing on a number of such cross-cutting issues.

The Use of Computers for Controlling Electricity Flows in Sweden, 1950–1980

An important application of computers from the 1950s and onwards has been for designing and operating complex infrastructural systems like air traffic, telephony, railways, and electricity. This paper tells the story about how computers from the 1950s and onwards became an important tool for designing and operating the Swedish power grid. It describes two phases of this development. In the 1950s and 1960s, computers were used for making complicated calculations for designing power grids in a reliable way and optimizing the use of the different power plants. In a second phase starting in the late 1960s, computer systems were developed for real time monitoring supporting human control of the power grid. The paper analyzes by whom and for what purposes computers became tools for controlling electricity flows. In the conclusion, it also discusses the wider implications of computers for the development of the Swedish power system.