Welcome to Ikeatown

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BoKlok (pronounced "book look", Swedish for "smart living") is Ikea's biggest idea yet. Having seized the market for affordable home furnishings in the past decade, the Swedish retail giant is now planning to provide the homes themselves. They've already built some 3,500 BoKlok dwellings across Scandinavia - and now they're coming to the UK.

Last month, planning permission was approved for the first British BoKlok development: 36 flats in St James Village, Gateshead, due for completion by the end of the year. Each apartment, with two or three bedrooms, is expected to cost less than £100,000. More will follow - many more, probably, since BoKlok is quick to build, energy efficient and aimed at households earning between £15,000 and £30,000 a year. Who's to stop them?

Jokes about homebuyers being handed a pile of flatpack boxes and one of those fiddly little Allen keys are greeted with forced "haven't heard that one before" smiles at BoKlok's HQ in Malmo. "Yes, we get a lot of that, even though they're built in factories by skilled craftsmen," says Ewa Magnusson, BoKlok's marketing manager. BoKlok, she explains, is actually a joint venture between Ikea and the Swedish construction giant Skanska, and is being built under licence in the UK by Live Smart@Home, a subsidiary of the Home property group.

Expansion into the UK is a big step for BoKlok, but a logical one. It was conceived in 1996 in response to similar housing conditions to those of present-day UK: demand outstripping supply, rising prices, not enough homes being built at the affordable end of the market. Initially, the BoKlok team turned not to architects but to researchers. They tracked trends in the dwindling size of the average Swedish household, and identified the model BoKlok homeowner: a female single parent with one child, no car and an average income. They then studied how much she could afford in rent, and set their budgets accordingly. Surveys conducted at Ikea stores across Sweden revealed their potential customers' housing priorities: the desire to live in secure, small-scale surroundings; proximity to the countryside; contact with neighbours; and homes that were light, well-planned, functional and furnished with natural materials.

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Here's the official website and some photos:

[ 01 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

So, people like me who want to own a home would end up on the outskirts of the city in suburban single-family homes or townhouses.

This, to me, is not a solution to the affordable housing situation, because it doesn't take into account the fact that a lot of people who can't afford homes maybe don't want to be stuck out in the outer suburbs. My life is downtown. I work downtown, I play downtown, I have connections downtown, and all of the resources I need to live (community centres with subsidized summer camps and weekend programs for my child, etc.) are downtown. You don't get that stuff in Mississauga, or even in the outer suburban areas of Toronto.

The housing problem isn't just about sticking some prefab houses on unused land and then telling poor people to go live there.

[ 02 April 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
This, to me, is not a solution to the affordable housing situation, because it doesn't take into account the fact that a lot of people who can't afford homes maybe don't want to be stuck out in the outer suburbs.

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I think for whatever new housing to be built in downtown areas, there has to be unoccupied property allocated just for affordable housing, and-or something has to be demolished to make way for people's needs. And we do have thousands of drafty, energy-inefficient buildings across the province that should be torn down and either replaced or green space created. I think it's a matter of political will. We also need better public transit in some Canadian cities. George Monbiot has a great idea for making city bus routes serve people better.

What it does take into account is lowering cost of building materials to barest necessities with energy efficiency in mind. The location is up to politicians and the local mafia cliques, I mean land developers.

[ 02 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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They are usually brought to the site on the back of trucks as pre-assembled units, like Portakabins, with the interiors already fitted out. Each apartment is made up of two of these units, which are simply moved into position by crane. Put on the roof and exterior wall cladding, plumb and wire it in, and it's ready to live in. The typical BoKlok arrangement is an L-shaped, two-storey block with three apartments on each floor. One such block can be put up in a day.

It sounds crudely straightforward, but the underlying design principles appear rock solid. Each apartment gets windows on three sides. On site, the L shape is often extended into a U, with a low-rise building containing storage space for each dwelling, thus creating a semi-enclosed courtyard. Each block, Magnusson explains, also gets its own apple tree - "something they can take care of together" - and what she describes as a "conceptual bench", a place outdoors where neighbours can meet.

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Some of the largest swaths of natural forest left on the planet are being dismantled at an alarming pace to feed a global wood-processing industry centered in coastal China.

Mountains of logs, many of them harvested in excess of legal limits aimed at preserving forests, are streaming toward Chinese factories where workers churn out such products as furniture and floorboards. These wares are shipped from China to major retailers such as Ikea, Home Depot, Lowe's and many others. They land in homes and offices in the United States and Europe, bought by shoppers with little inkling of the wood's origins or the environmental costs of chopping it down.

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[ 02 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

The only difference is this time unions should consider using their worker's pensions to fund the enterprise instead of hiring capitalists to buy Wal-Mart shares.

The combination of a strong co-op movement with a steady stream of worker's pension funds would be truly revolutionary and would be the biggest threat to our current New Feudal Order.

I just finished reading "The People's Co-Op: The Life and Times of a North End Institution." It's the history of the People's Co-Op in Winnipeg. I lived in Winnipeg for 14 years and I remember as a child visiting our grandmother on Selkirk Ave. A visit to the Co-Op was always a highlight (their ice cream and butter were delicious!).

I really recommend the book because it is a great history of how progressive people with very limited means challenged the corporatists and built a progressive movement. As with all true movements against corporatism (in whatever it's form) they were the subject of vicious attacks and persecution. Due to their refusal to forget their progressive past (which many other co-ops, trade unions and credit unions have done) they remained different and a target throughout their existance. Yet still they thrived because their belief of cutting out the "middle man" and selling good products as close to cost as possible (with 10% of their budget allocated to progressive education and other causes) is a winner.

Their survival and way of doing business for 64 years (the combination of the US dairies moving in, de-regulation by a Tory government and the recession of the early 90's was too much to bear) provides a clear path on how to build a successful counter balance that no government in Canada has been able to do. What's important to remember is that when they closed operations they still had a fully funded pension plan and all member/investors received a sizeable dividend cheque.

We already have co-op housing maybe it's time we built co-op houses! The People's Co-Op did and built low cost houses that served the needs of the community and it's memebers.

Sorry for the thread drift and reminiscing but it was a great read:

search for "the people's co-op"

Or else you could just request your library to order it to borrow for no charge (at least in Ontario).

[ 02 April 2007: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
The feds should create a Canadian version of Ikea, and lay claim on tens of thousands of hectares of timber for a nationalised furniture company employing Canadians trained in everything from forestry management to carpentry to fine cabinet making skills."

[ 02 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Doug:

Ooooh...furniture designed by bureaucrats. I can hardly wait to have that in my living room! There's definitely a place for state enterprise, but this isn't it.

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Ya, apparently some of us are enthralled by news reports of our nitwits in Ottawa when they hold knives to their own throats over softwood lumber squabbles with the Yanks. It's a bad soap opera.