Rosengård, Malmö, Sweden

I went to school in Rosengård from grade 4 to 9. So did my brother and most of our friends. As the Swedish social democrats and the shipyards of Kockums (in Malmö) and Öresundsvarven (in Landskrona) suddenly collapsed due to competition from Japanese shipyards such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., the Hitachi Zosen Corporation, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. and Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries... - and as the oil crisis of 1974 meant the end of huge oil tankers... - bells ringing as we are now in a "Peak Oil" crisis, of even more serious ramifications for heavy industries, and for ordinary folks as well.



(London Pride, built in 1971 in Malmö, Sweden: Tonnage: 255 090 dwt.)

Malmö is a city that had to adopt to a lot of change over the years. Kockums where the fathers of several of my friends worked, is now "innovative", but mostly in the field of military technology, as part of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. For example, Japanese military submarines started using Sterling engines from Kockums for the Asashio (TSS-3601) submarines since 2001.

Rosengård was conceived of and constructed in the late 1960s to accomodate Swedish workers' needs. This is where I spent five years of my youth: The Rosengård area of Malmö is now instead 85-95% immigrant.

Read more in The Local: Rosengård: hardship and hope

Läs mer på svenska Wikipedia: Varvskrisen

San Francisco Chronicle: After oil supplies dry up, what's Plan B?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Those solar powered Stirling engines (which generate electricity) on the Kockums website look neat.
1:57 pm, August 30, 2007
Martin J Frid said…
Thanks, I didn't notice that, I guess the websited used "stealth" technology..
9:10 pm, August 31, 2007
Pandabonium said…
It is hard to navigate that site. Here's the page:
http://www.kockums.se/Products/kockumsstirlingm.html
9:26 am, September 01, 2007
Martin J Frid said…
Thanks! Amazing that they can use heat from the sun (or any source) for submarine engines. I should have paid more attention to my physics classes!
8:24 pm, September 01, 2007
Pandabonium said…
Well, they don't power the submarines by solar energy (they burn diesel), but they can use the very same kind of engine to make electricity.
5:35 pm, September 02, 2007
Anonymous said…
ThyssenKrupp has an intersting history. Thyssen having financed Hitler with the aid of a US based Union Bank run by Prescott Bush (grandfather of the present US president). Krupp being the famous (or infamous) steel and arms manufacturer from Essen.
5:40 pm, September 02, 2007
Martin J Frid said…
Ouch!

...and we sold SAAB to GM and Volvo to Ford. Still, there is a lot of Swedish creativity around, from companies like IKEA (furniture), H&M (clothes), to BRIO (wooden toys)...

Nuclear power plant-slash-dam builder-slash huge engineering company ABB is half Swedish too. I like some of the things they do, such as pollution filters for chimneys and garbage incinerators. Their subsidiary is called AB Flakt, with a long history in Japan, linked with the trading company Gadelius, that has been here (in Tokyo and Kobe) since the Meiji era.

http://www.gadelius.com/
10:12 pm, September 02, 2007
Pandabonium said…
Once we move from private to corporate we enter a very different world, I think.
7:44 pm, September 04, 2007
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