<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/gothenburg-sweden-inequality-climate-change-bank-loan/>
"Annie Hohlfält has lived in Gothenburg for 25 years. It’s a place she loves,
but she’s also only too aware of the economic disparities bubbling beneath the
surface of Sweden’s second-largest — and highly prosperous — city.
“Gothenburg is one of the most segregated cities in Sweden, maybe even in
Europe, thanks to socio-economic differences that have created a kind of second
class,” she says. “There are areas that are very isolated from the rest of the
city. They’re not really part of the urban fabric.”
As head of development and social sustainability for Framtiden, the City of
Gothenburg’s property management arm, Hohlfält hopes to change all that through
an innovative project that is seeing Framtiden pour SEK 11 billion (around US
$1.1 billion) into six of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods over the
next three years. This covers 84,000 residents whose average life expectancy is
around eight years lower than the average Gothenburg resident.
With this money, the city and Framtiden have agreed on 14 “tasks” they have set
out to achieve by 2025. These include a summer jobs and family support program
for young people, as well as a job creation and small business development
scheme, and are set to help tackle some of the neighborhoods’ biggest problems:
Low education standards and high unemployment levels, which have led to
widespread poverty and endemic gang-related crime rates.
Overall, the budget for improving life in these six communities has gone up 50
percent since 2019. What makes this initiative stand out, however, is the way
in which the City of Gothenburg is working with its banking partners to
negotiate a new way of financing ambitious projects such as this beyond the
typical revenue-raising activities of taxation, fines, local service charges
and corporate partnerships.
With six major Nordic banks, the City of Gothenburg has agreed on a loan that
allows the city to borrow, repay and withdraw again. Against this loan, the
city will pay a higher interest penalty if its targets are not met. If it does
meet its targets, it will receive a discount on the interest payments. In
addition to Framtiden’s work in the city’s most vulnerable areas, separate
targets include three initiatives to help Gothenburg reach its goal of becoming
carbon neutral by 2030."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
