She and Anders had relocated to Österlen a little over three months ago. She joked to her friends about it being their dream home—which it was, at least in terms of its location. They’d found a classic Skånelänga for sale on the edge of one of the villages north of Tomelilla: a rural cottage in the long, low format that still typified the region, if only in the tourist brochures. It was just the right size for two frugal artists, with a well-lit loft room for Torill’s ceramics studio and a rickety but charming shed—an old garage, really—where Anders could assemble all his woodworking stuff and hang projects-in-progress from the rafters. With the money they’d save by no longer needing to rent studio space in Malmö, they’d actually be better off with the larger mortgage the move would require—though it had taken quite some time, and a lot of spreadsheets, to convince their bank of this.
After their first few weeks in their new home, unpacking and settling in, the house began giving up its secrets. Just as Anders’s father had warned them, most of the secrets were to do with work that would need to be done to prevent the place from falling down around their ears. Torill and Anders had already priced in some problems, but nowhere near so many as actually presented themselves. None of them were beyond the reach of so capable and crafty a couple, at least in technical terms—but it would all take time, money, and resources. Still high on optimism and the sudden sense of space and liberation that came with leaving Malmö for the balmy light and rolling fields of Österlen, they had assumed that time would be the hardest of the three to find, followed by money.
As it had turned out, however, it was quite the other way around.
The washing-up finished, Anders walked over to the kitchen table, drying his hands on a dish-towel before clapping them gently on Torill’s shoulders and squeezing at the knotted muscles with his thumbs.
“More rejections?”
“Yep. Every single one, damn it.”
“Just like arts grants, back in the old days.”
“Hah!” Torill snorted. “At least with those, you had the illusion of competing on competence and novelty. But with this, there’s no fig-leaf at all. As probationary residents, we just don’t qualify yet, and the system is quite blunt about saying so.”
“Well, we should probably look on the bright side, babe—it’s better to know where you really stand, right?”
“Yeah, right.” Torill sighed again. “File under ‘be careful what you wish for’, I guess.”
#
What Torill and Anders had wished for—beyond their simple desire for a home and studio in the countryside—was to live somewhere that was taking a proactive approach to reducing resource use. The regional government had introduced a sort of platform or ‘digital layer’ around five years ago, which was meant to make it possible to track the local availability and distribution of resources. The ongoing violence and disruption in the world beyond Sweden had gotten all the politicians talking about "local solidarity" and "circular economics" and various related concepts, but even when they meant what they said, there was only so much that words could do.
The same went for code, Anders observed: you could build as many platforms as you liked, but platforms alone wouldn’t be enough to change the way people live. He’d done a Masters in climate politics before deciding to become a bespoke furniture-maker—”before turning to turning”, as he liked to joke with his old academic colleagues—and he’d taken with him the realisation that the thing people were referring to when they spoke about ‘the economy’ was a big messy aggregate formed by the habits of multiple minds and bodies and organisations. It wasn’t that it couldn’t be steered; it’s that steering it made an oil tanker look nimble by comparison.
But ‘the economy’ was not a uniform phenomenon, either. Some places seemed to be lagging behind on the necessary changes, but others—whether due to bold and visionary politicians, or to the dogged persistence of otherwise invisible municipal employees, or some blend of the two—were a little further out in front. Torill had been keeping an eye on Tomelilla ever since their early engagement with so-called ‘donut economics’, way back during the first pandemic. Having that commitment to living within planetary boundaries woven into its political fabric, Tomelilla was well placed to take full advantage of the region’s new platform for resource management. After just a couple of years, they were reporting a 30% reduction of goods and materials imported from outside the area, which in turn meant a considerable drop in embedded emissions—the carbon footprint of not just the stuff you bought, but also of the way that stuff came to you.
This was exactly the sort of thing Torill and Anders wanted to be a part of, and so they had saved and planned and hoped until, finally, they got the opportunity they’d been waiting for, in the form of their little Skånelänga. Finally, a place where Anders could make his tables and chairs, where Torill could sculpt, and where they could both be confident that they were working as much within ecological boundaries as possible.
But it turned out they were working within even tighter boundaries than they had expected.
#
The problem had first became apparent when, after the first few weeks of settling into the house, Anders decided to order a batch of wood to work with. They had both signed up for the Tomelilla digital residency scheme, as they had been advised to do when the house purchase was confirmed. This meant that they could browse the municipality-managed listings of materials and resources and labour on offer within the area, as well as the general-access listings for stuff in Skåne beyond.
Anders liked to work with scrap material for his projects wherever possible, taking broken things or otherwise valueless bits of wood and making something (hopefully) magical out of them. He was surprised at first to see prices much higher than he was used to, before realising that this was simply the under-discussed upshot of a circular economy: if fewer new resources are entering the system, then fewer resources will end up going to go to landfill or being priced as junk. This was a good thing, in almost every way—though it would mean Anders might have to rethink the way he priced his work, once he’d established a local reputation for it. Putting such concerns aside for another day, he filed bids on various batches and billets of wood, and even put a few requests in for local clay, as Torill had asked him to.
All bids were processed at midnight, in order to give everyone a fair chance at finding things they wanted. The day after he placed his first bids, Anders logged back in to the system in order to find out what he’d managed to win, only to find out that he hadn’t won anything at all. It wasn’t even that he’d bid too low; most of the lots he’d bid on had gone for around the same price he’d offered, if not a little less.
This wasn’t an immediate problem, at least for Anders, who was still working his way through the backlog of wood they’d brought with them from the old studio—he was midway through making what promised to be a very handsome, yet modest kitchen table—but it wouldn’t last forever. Besides, the whole plan had been to get plugged in to the local system of resources, to reduce their footprint, live and work within the limits. That was going to be hard if they couldn't get their hands on the materials they needed to make things.
After a little clicking around, Anders discovered that one’s residency status in the municipality acted as a sort of handicap in the bidding system.
“But we are registered residents, aren’t we?” Torill had asked. “Filling in all those forms took hours! Don’t tell me there’s still more of them we need to do.”
“We’re registered, yes. But our status is both probationary and low-scoring.”
“Probationary?” Torill was incensed. “What, the municipality can decide to turn around and... and sack us, like some dodgy tradesman?”
“No, not like that. They can’t kick us out. But full residency is assessed partly on duration of tenure.”
“So we’re second-class citizens until we’ve been here for long enough, is that what you’re telling me?”
“That’s a rather extreme way of putting it, Torill.”
“And that is a typically wishy-washy way of saying ‘yes’, Anders.”
The basic mechanism was that, in any given situation or potential exchange—a bid on a pile of scrap wood, for example—two otherwise equal claims could be decided by reference to the length of time the bidders had been resident in the municipality; this was calculated by looking not only at how long the individual had had a tenancy or owned property in the area, but also how many months of each year they actually spent on site.
Torill harrumphed. “At least it’s set up so the Stockholmers who only come down here for six weeks every summer are second-class residents, too.”
“It’s actually a very fair system, in its own way. Scrupulous, even. All the advantage accrues to those who’ve been here the longest.”
“That’s great for them, Anders, but less so for us. Think about it: if your residency clout is based on length of tenure, as you put it, then everyone’s clout is increasing at the same rate.”
“So?”
“The days of urban exodus from areas like this ended years ago. Look at the stats if you don’t believe me; the only way people leave this municipality is in a coffin.”
“I still don’t see—”
“What it means, Anders, is that the only way out of our probationary status is to wait for enough old people to die.”
#
On further investigation, it turned out that the system was slightly more nuanced than that—one’s first five years in the area improved one’s residency status by a much greater degree than the next five, and so on—but Torill’s assessment was basically correct. Their status would also be improved by economic contributions to the area, broadly construed.
“Which basically means buying and selling things, whether products or services, within the municipal boundaries,” explained Ylva, Torill’s new neighbour.
Ylva had appeared on the doorstep a few days previously, introduced herself abruptly, and invited Torill for fika.
“Got tired of waiting for you to make a move. Whole village has been taking bets on how long it would be before you did.”
“Oh, how embarrassing. It’s been so much work trying to get settled that I just never got round to it. You must think we’re terribly rude.”
“Nah, not rude. Stuck up, some said—but that’s a stuck up thing to say, isn’t it? Anyway, I prefer to decide for myself rather than indulge in empty gossip. Eleven on Thursday work for you?”
It did—and so Torrill found herself pouring her heart out over tea and kardemummabullar in Ylva’s kitchen.
“But how can we contribute economically if we can’t even get the materials we need to do our work? Anders could find wood in Malmö like he used to, but that would mean someone driving it from place to place, which would add to the cost as well as the footprint. And I can order clay online, of course, but you never know where it’s coming from. The cheaper it is, the more likely it is to be wrecking the local environment wherever it’s being dug up.
“We came here because we wanted to play a part in something local, to work within the boundaries, to be responsible creators,” she continued. “What fools we were! This lovely little house, the landscape, the light—everything we ever wanted, right down to the ecological principles. Only if we’d have looked a little closer, we’d have seen that those principles meant it would be basically impossible for us to live here and practice our art, because the whole thing is basically some sort of digitised communist gerontocracy!”
Torill dabbed at her tears with a napkin.
“I’m sorry, that was a bit much, wasn’t it?” she sniffed. “It’s lovely here, Ylva, but I just don’t see how Anders and I can make it work.”
“Oh, you’ll do just fine,” said Ylva, with a laugh. “Just as soon as you stop thinking like city folk.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Well, look—you’ve concluded, quite correctly, that the market for blind purchases of material and services in this municipality is strongly weighted in favour of individuals with a quantifiably long connection to the area.”
“Why do you all start talking like that when this topic comes up?” Torill interjected.
“Like what?”
“With all those... well, with what my father used to call ‘hundred-kronor words’.”
Ylva laughed again. “The language does seem to come with the system, admittedly. But that’s kind of my point, I guess? The system doesn’t understand nuance, doesn’t understand anything but cold, hard numbers. It’s very safe—but very unforgiving, as you’ve found.”
“Unforgiving is the least of it!”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But here’s a question for you: why assume that the municipal listings are the only way you can get the things you need?”
“Wait—you’re saying that there are other listings where the residency stuff doesn’t apply?”
“No, city girl,” said Ylva, rolling her eyes. “I’m saying the municipal listings are rigged to be very safe for blind exchanges—exchanges where neither party knows the other. But residents and local businesses are free to buy and sell outside of the listings, if they want to. They can decide for themselves who gets to take or buy what they’re offering, and at what price.”
“But how do you find out who has what?”
“Now, that’s the tricky bit.” Ylva refilled both of their cups with coffee. “Guess you’re going to have to learn to talk to people.”
#
They did find it tricky at first—less because they didn’t like talking to people, but more because it felt oddly instrumentalist to talk to people just because you thought they might have something you needed, or vice versa.
“That’s the city in you talking,” said Ylva, who had taken it upon herself to ease Torill and Anders into the web of the village. All three of them were taking coffee in her kitchen again, this time with a home-made carrot cake that Torrill had brought.
“Out here it’s understood that people have stuff or skills you might need, so you might as well get to know who’s who,” she continued. “Don’t see it as an obstacle to friendship, but friendship’s foundation.”
“So it’s a bit like mutual aid,” mused Anders. “You know, Kropotkin, solidarity, all that sort of stuff.”
“I don’t know anything about this Kropotkin, Anders. But I figure it must be a big part of how villages would have worked, back when villages were much smaller. They’re bigger now, of course, and so you can’t hope to know everyone—but that’s where the listings come in. They’re for times when you don’t know someone who knows someone, you know?”
“Well, we still don’t know anyone much,” said Torill. “I hope it doesn’t take too long for us to get plugged in.”
Ylva smiled, patting the top of her handsome new kitchen table.
“Oh, I think you’ll find that word gets around pretty fast.”
SCENARIO 3: “TURNING TO THE LAYERS OF PROXIMITY”
In Österlen, 2035 is a time of strong local focus due to the uncertainties resulting from political disturbances in Sweden and beyond; the seeming instability of larger, globally-oriented structures and systems has highlighted a need for strengthening local communities, and the establishment of local and circular economic value chains.
The region of Skåne took the lead in creating a digital platform where local government and non-governmental actors could work together to leverage resources, and to optimise information and material flows. People, municipalities and companies all contribute their own layers of spatialised information about demands and supplies of resources, both natural (e.g. water, soil) and produced (e.g. electricity, materials). Values of solidarity and sharing drive the education of outsiders and tourists in methods for using the community’s resources in a sustainable way.
"Community" has become something like a membership based on proximity: a social contract like state residency, in which various criteria stipulate responsibilities and entitlements, only operating at a neighbourhood level. Contract status is based on a combination of total and annual duration of residency, and on access to and consumption of major resources. Official residents have full access to the platform, while new applicants have more limited access; the system is owned and managed by the municipality, resulting in high levels of trust from residents toward the system.
