SW22 Visit to city hall of Eskiltuna

The sustainable develop responsible of Eskilstuna receives teenagers to discuss about the politic of development on his territory., The city staff showed a very interesting video : Eskilstuna around the clock which focuses about different aspects of the city. The actual aim of this city is to create a sustainable city and an equal society. Once the video past, we learned about the industrial history of the city and short factsit is less than one hour from Stockholm by train, located between the lakes Mälaren and Hiälmaren with Mälardalens university - Campus 107 500 citizens (2021) and annual increase with about 1 000 citizens. Then they explained the Klimatprogram of Eskiltuna: Climate positive place 2045, easy to live a climate smart and fossil free life, should be a role model, make Eskilstuna – together, have green economy they need people and create an energy evolution center, a real house where they have meetings and sho to citizens show produces and good practices to fix new advices for projects. Then, some students and teacher gave a little speech to explain their goals to learn good practises  about the topic and exchanged about the Re-tuna experience. They showed us a presentation about the sustainable urban planning. The main idea, is to try to densify the city without any impact on green infrastructures such as projects of low impact buildings rehabilitation. Several schemes were shown to explain how a city can be densify and how to create green spaces and new houses without devastating the environment and saving the railway past of the city converting for example some buildings into bicycle storage.
The city has fixed climate goals: The same as the Climate Program (Climate positive 2045 and reduce 80 % 2020-2030) /

5 focus areas (energy, transport, building of construction, sustainable consommation and production, reduce carbon) /

lower the negative impact - our emissions / increase the positive impact – enable /climate transition

They decided for climate actions, their own responsibility / Energy efficiency –their schools, care homes etc, to realise 3,5 MW solar on their roofs and waste depot, to produce 50 % wind from our own wind power mills, to use Ca400 cars on biogas and electricity and of course think of low energy buildings - arena and aquatic centre. Their politic is really focus on recycling and reuse in the municipality and save a lot of money: furniture (Offices, Meeting rooms, Schools) andcomputer (Buy reconditioned, Sell off)

They built redistribution centers:  Circular city with Lila 20 000 households - sorting waste in 7 fractions and 7 colour bags: Food, newspapers, well, metal, plastic containers, textiles and residues for energy production in the same bin by optic sorting of the bags.

ReTuna - recycling and waste depot at the same site. CirkuLäran with Sustainable pre-school (circular and social perspectives).
Eco Friends: Waste and recycling, what is water, energies consumption. Strategic action plan 2023-2027 is clear: Circular economy based on: 
- Biological (Phosphorus other nutrients back to the field, Food waste , Reduce food waste) and 
- Technical (Reuse buildings and construction materials, Reuse the excavated soil in local constructions, Circular shopping in the centre of eskiltuna, Stimulate growth of circular Industries and increase circular jobs)

Moreover, in circular economy the cities must have car sharing, public cycle pool, micro mobility with electrics scooters, and Eskilstuna is working on it. The most important point is to build an attractive city that makes people happy about it. 
After the conference and questions from French students, we visit at the end the main room of the city hall where all decisions are voted.

The students have to make the link with the work they had to do themselves during the week and the mayor of the city of Dunkirk. They were happy to be received by responsible of sustainable development, and they warmly thanked them for their hospitality. They also found the presentation of the Elkinstuna s action plan really interesting and important to know some other models of city.