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er the relative costs of flats and houses is inconclusive. The authorities claim that flats are cheaper; housebuilders say otherwise. There is a breath of suspicion that official costing methods were manipulated to prove the economy of flats and to forestall criticism. Comparison with Norway tells another tale. In that country, although the Welfare State has advanced as far, social engineering lags behind, and individuality, historically women nike air max more pronounced than in Sweden, has held its ground. Small houses dominate. Over seventy per <a href="http://www.timberlandfeel.com/products_new.html"><strong>timberland pro boots</strong></a> cent of all new building is in the form of semidetached or free-standing houses. Size for size, nike air max plus they cost the same as flats, and often somewhat less. But the Swedes have deliberately tried to turn their population into clients of the State. Town planning authorities will admit reluctantly, when pressed in private, that there is plenty of land for a nation of home-owners while yet preserving the environment. Green belts could be secured around the cities, and open spaces guaranteed, with national parks and 262 The New Totalitarians mountains and deserts in the north. Even the highest conceivable increase of population will leave them with a density more suitable to some frontier territory in a far continent, than a modern State on the edge of Europe. Quite other reasons are adduced for the patterns of building actually enforced. The density of building is decided not by nike air max 1 considerations of architecture or landscaping, but by the demands of ideology and nike air max 90 current administration. Planning in Sweden does not simply imply the physical arrangement of buildings in the landscape, but the total control of the environment. This means that the design of a new community is conditioned by the mechanics of providing public services. “Where building is spread out, the provision of public services becomes too expensive and, conversely, an economic supply requires a minimum density of population. It is on this principle that Swedish town planning is based. By public services, the Swedes understand everything required by society. This means nike usa online not only the utilities, such as water, power, telephones and roads, but education, social welfare and public administration. As far as the utilities are concerned, it is freely conceded that the extra expense caused by scattered habitation can be recouped through taxes. Social welfare is the vital criterion. Professor Rexed nike air max shop defines it in this way: ‘The whole environment has to be rearranged to bring the community into the Welfare State.’ In practice, this has meant that housing has been built within immediate reach nike air max plus of social welfare and medical <a href="http://www.timberlandfeel.com/"><strong>cheap timberland boots</strong></a> centres. The principle has been that the periphery must be within walking distance of the centre. Although this ostensibly benefits the individual, it is also geared to the organization of welfare. Social welfare workers and doctors function more efficiently in a dense area than a thinly populated one. For this reason, then, the new cities, suburbs and housing estates of Sweden, wherever they may be, are constructed to a density determined not by public taste or indiviThe Environmental Mill 263 dual wishes, but as an acceptable ratio of population: welfare resources. On this principle, a housing estate of small homes alone is considered too thinly spread. Instead, communities are built with tower blocks of flats at the centre, surrounded by lower blocks of flats (about four storeys high), with terraced houses, and a nike air max 97 few free-standing houses on the periphery. The appearance of the satellite towns around Stockholm is almost medieval in the way that habitation clusters round a power centre. But whereas, in the medieval city, the power was symbolized by a castle, in the contemporary Swedish suburb it is hidden in some bland offices housing official agencies in a corner of a building virtually indistinguishable from its neighbours. The intent of the town planner is, cutting through the jargon, to discourage independence, and bring the citizen within the control of the central administration and within the orbit of the collective. Some administrators are prepared to admit this in so many words. Mrs Ingrid Jussil, a Social Democratic ideologist and a town planning expert in the Ministry of the Interior, said this: ‘Town planning must emphasize the collective. We can achieve this by nike air max shoes breaking down barriers, and forcing people into contact with each other. In that way, we can, for example, socialize children early. Society has got to decide how people are going to live. Air Max 2011 ‘ But the Swedish planners, behaviourists though they may be, do not expect the environment to work unaided. They acknowledge that the mentality of the citizen needs to be primed, and it is in this field that the different agents of the State are so profitably dovetailed. Where the attitudes for new surroundings are required, education may be allied to town planning. Professor Rexed again: ‘Our schools promote social thinking and new evaluations of society. They promote a social revolution within society, a revolution nike air max womens that the teachers have accepted as well. The general ideas of our 264 The New Totalitarians younger people have been levelled out and, broadly speaking, the new school system is producing people who accept the same evaluations of ideas and society. And the main body of the people accept them as well.’ To a great degree nike air max 97 , he is right. The inhabitants of the new suburbs at least profess a certain consensus which accepts the planned community as the norm. There is a compact resentment of anybody who admits to a preference cheap nike air max for <a href="http://www.timberlandfeel.com/timberland-6-inch-premium-c-12.html"><strong>timberland 6 inch discount</strong></a> a distinctive style of living that suits his individuality because it implies rejection of the approved viewpoint. Commonly in the press, the house-owner will be presented as anti-social, one of the worst of accusations in Sweden. Politicians, on the other hand, cannot openly attack private houses, because a substantial minority of the Swedish population (about thirty per cent) still live in them. Nor, however, is it policy to support them. That would antagonize a public that has accepted the doctrine of collective living or alternatively, in a peculiarly Swedish way, is uniformly jealous of anybody different or better off.* ‘You can praise the owneroccupier,’ a leading Liberal politician has said, ‘but not too loudly.’ Although the Swedes have been persuaded to accept urban and collective styles of living, it is against their traditional nike air max women habits. At heart, the Swedes are still northern peasants. What they want is a little house in the forest; what they get is a flat in the suburbs. Paradox and conflict – yet their lot is not unbearable. If, as is most likely, the flat is high rise, at least it will be separated from the next block by a properly landscaped space, and the whole will be surrounded by a green belt, most often in the form of untouched forest. Yet, there is always a kind of insidious suffocation in these surroundings which, expressed as ennui, isolation, brooding, juvenile delinquency and inchoate resentment, settles upon the * ‘The Royal Swedish Jealousy’ is a proverbial saying among the Swedes. The Environmental Mill 265 inhabitants. This is particularly true of the showpieces, like Vallingby, Farsta and Skarholmen, women nike air max outside Stockholm. Thus, although urban concentration is planned to reinforce the welfare system, it also aggravates the strains of urbanization. People are oppressed by the sensation of transience. Their flat is not nike air max womens their home, and they often look for the compensation of a cottage in the country. The standard explanation of this instinct is that it is a form of nature worship. More properly, it is a search for relief from an alien pattern of habitation. Without the institution of the country cottage, the splendid new suburbs of Sweden would long ago have turned into expensive lunatic asylums. Since the country cottages are generally purchased outright, they confer the sense of ownership which is so conspicuously absent from everyday housing. So it is that the Swede sees his real home in his country cottage, a necessary outlet for care and feeling, while his workaday dwelling appears only a temporary <a href="http://www.greentownfc.com/blog/blog.php?do=showone&uid=5328&type=blog&itemid=3232 24"><strong>vibram shoes- Christian Louboutin boots puts Victoria Beckham ...</strong></a> shelter. And yet, every year, he will spend no more than a summer month or so in his cottage. Ostensibly, the authorities view the possession nike air max 87 of a cottage in the country benevolently, because it is a sign of affluence. But in fact it is a cause for concern, because house-ownership is an escape from centralized authority. The flight to the country cottage not only evades administrative control, it is also nike air max usa a sign of failure in town planning. It is perfectly true that shovelling the population into unaccustomed housing estates has confirmed their passivity and vindicated the effectiveness of government propa