Boden: Vacant houses in the river valley

How can vacant houses in the river valley be brought back into use? Team Boden explored a new model for rural development that takes existing buildings and local resources as its starting point.

Conditions: Approximately 25 kilometres north of Boden city centre, the Råneå river passes through the river valley. This is a cross-municipal landscape that runs from Gällivare in the north to Luleå in the east. Norrbyarna, as the villages along the river valley are called, has a committed civil society and here a grocery store and a service point are run in collaboration between civil society and the municipality. There are around 550 vacant houses in the area, mapped through the Growing Together project. A number of these also have no known owners.

Challenge: What role can the already built play in the communities of the future? The team will focus on the question: How can the identified vacant buildings be used and contribute to meeting the needs for housing and good living environments for both existing and new residents? How can this be designed with ecological, economic and social sustainability in mind?

Team Boden developed a model for how vacant houses can be activated and contribute to meeting the municipality’s housing needs without constructing new buildings. The work started from the question of how local conditions, including buildings, history, people and relationships, can be used to respond to the needs of a place and contribute to long-term, sustainable place development.

In Gunnarsbyn, the housing stock is dominated by owner-occupied single-family houses. At the same time, there is a need for a wider range of housing options for older residents, young people and families who want to remain in or move to the area. Low property values make it possible for houses to remain vacant, while also making new construction financially risky.

With support from the Municipality of Boden and the local association RÅEK, the team mapped the needs, conditions and resources of both the municipality and the local community. Based on this mapping, the team developed a strategy to strengthen collaborative capacity in the community and to support place-based and resource-efficient rural development.

The work focused in particular on vacant buildings that are too large or otherwise difficult to sell as single-family houses. These buildings were identified as having the potential to be converted into small multi-family housing while also carrying historical and social significance for the place.

The project resulted in three prototypes: Bygdenyttan (“Community Benefit”), Delningsarkitektur (“Shared Architecture”) and Tillsammansbyggande (“Collaborative Building”). The proposals were formulated as an approach to development that takes its starting point in existing buildings, the history of the place, people and relationships. The models were tested in Gunnarsbyn but can also be applied in other places in the Swedish countryside.

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