Ikea Is Building Its Own City

By JacobSloan on April 11, 2012 in News 19

If you’ve ever lingered in a display at an Ikea store, wishing you could remain there forever, now is your lucky day. The Globe and Mail reports:

The Swedes now want to place you and 6,000 neighbours into a neglected corner of your city, design an entire urban world around you, and Ikea-ize your lives. Ikea’s city-building ambition is in a triangle of post-industrial wasteland in the far reaches of East London. Their vision is to turn this grey netherworld into a tightly packed neighbourhood they’ll call Strand East.

This will be an all-rental private neighbourhood, run and overseen by a private company. And here is where living in an Ikea neighbourhood might come to resemble a long day in an Ikea store: The company wants you to be in a neat, clean, pleasant environment. And it very much wants you to have fun. Those things that normally just happen in life will be carefully managed from above.

cities, Community, Ikea, London, neighborhoods, Urban Planning

Raz

Ikea’s archology. Like in those ol’rpg games like Cyberpunk 2020 os Shadowrun. Who knew that all those authors are visionaries of a crappy future?
- http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient
  
  Who’da thunk that any cyberpunk was a dystopia.
rus Archer

sounds like a job for fightclub
- DeepCough
  
  You just broke the first two rules of Fight Club!
  - TCPrimus
    
    So did you.
    - DeepCough
      
      No I didn’t, I’m Tyler Durden–aka a figment of your imagination.
  - Hardwoodfloor
    
    now you have to fight.
Calypso_1

I always thought Walmart would be the first retailer to build their own city.
Hedzombie

Google will be next.
visi circle

Interesting… Where you going with this, Ikea boy?
Liam_McGonagle

That’s terrific. It should lead to a huge boom for the building salvage and rescue recovery industries.

Given the typical quality of Ikea products, I give it a week before a light breeze shakes loose the 3/4″ screws holding up the superstructure of the New WTC.
- Nunzio X
  
  I doubt they’d be so extravagant as to use 3/4″ screws when 1/2″ screws are so much cheaper.
Cc5881

Sounds like a death camp to me. How scary.
saint_al

‘Expedit’ and ‘Billy’ FTW! Seriously, couldn’t imagine living in an IKEA building that was more than one story tall. Guess the construction materials will be shipped flat packed with a free Allen wrench. : P
justagirl

i would graffiti the fuck out of that place..
Technobob

You know there will ba a part left over
Heath

We’d like to make a sterile unsustainable community would you like to join?
Don’t be concerned, the outer edge of town supplies many amenities.
Such as, low police presence
small local stores with white bread and bean sandwiches, and the local outsourced pharmaceutical retailer outside.
The stench of trash
no pesky gardens and fresh veggies straight from mexico
A big metal fence keeping in the rabble
Employs the feel of NY with the poverty and style of New Mexico
Mike10

Ikea outsources much of its labor to the USA: we are Sweden’s thrid-world country…
Limes

termites unite