Vällingby

Vällingby (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈvɛllɪŋˌbyː]; by most Swedes today understood as "Gruel Village", see history below) is a suburban district in Västerort in the western part of , Sweden.

Vällingby was planned in the early 1950s as a new town. Following its inauguration in 1954, it soon became world famous as a unique, well-planned city district served by the and a symbol of the Swedish middle-way welfare state.

The agricultural land where the modern suburb now stands, has a history stretching some 2,000 years back (i.e. at least twice as old as ). The people who lived there were known as vaellingar, "those living on the embankment". While it first appears in historical records in 1347 and it is known two farmyards existed here during the reign of King Gustav Vasa in the 16th century, in the 1922 edition of Nordisk Familjebok the location was still regarded as too insignificant to deserve an article. In 1953 the number of inhabitants barely exceeded 2,000.

In a few years this rural land was transformed into the present modern suburb, inaugurated in 1954 in a ceremony attracting some 75,000 people. Vällingby was the first "ABC City" — an acronym for Arbete - Bostad - Centrum, "Labour - Housing - Centre" — a suburb designed to offer its residents everything they needed, in short an independent city. High above the modern structure a rotating V-symbol placed the project on the map, while the shining T-symbol (for tunnelbana, metro) proudly indicated the presence of the newly built . Shortly after the inauguration of the modern suburb the number of inhabitants had reached 25,000.

The new suburb was the fruit of plans to exploit the rural areas surrounding Stockholm dating back to the early 20th century. As a direct consequence of real-estate speculations around the turn of the century 1900, centralised municipal city planning was widely accepted as a necessary tool to solve the acute housing shortage and the City of Stockholm bought large areas for the purpose. During the decades preceding the construction of Vällingby, a series of small-scale suburbs had been realised: Some more or less exclusive — such as the egnahemsområden ("own-your-own-home areas") at and Saltsjöbaden built around 1900; or in the style of the Garden City, like in Bromma and Enskede built between the wars; and low blocks of apartments built during the 1940s, like in Traneberg and Abrahamsberg.

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Wikipedia