Happy Labor Day

Icelandic Landscape

I think this shot of the Icelandic suburbs says a lot about the place and how landscape can shape a community.

Walking on the Inside

Living within the construction

So, some of the things that immediately strike me as strange is that in Iceland, people seem to be living amongst the construction. In this particular neighborhood. People have been living here since the construction started about 2 years ago. Their porches and backyards are made of construction materials and their yards seem to be made of waste. I am working on trying to find out why this is. It is either that the neighborhood is just that desirable, or maybe they got a cheaper deal, or maybe the promise of the end of construction was much sooner.

Promise of a new Life

So, I have been keeping a series on the side of all of the flashy signs that are made and posted everywhere of the signs which promise the fancy new stark and clean buildings. The style in Iceland right now is super clean, straight, cement style building. The pictures are sort of inviting at first. They are clean, angular and look very modern. But they also sort of remind me of Eastern European blocks. Why would Iceland, being one of the wealthiest nation in the world, need to build space and money saving futuristic looking apartment blocks?

Multiples

Many of the new neighborhoods are built with the exact same houses street after street. I am often unsure of which streets I may have already walked on, because all of the houses are the same. You can see here how similar these houses are. The next street over is probably the same.

So there you have some examples of Iceland’s newest neighborhoods. I am meeting with the Real Estate Statistics Office sometime soon to get some cold hard facts and I am hoping to meet with one of Iceland’s top economists to get some opinions and facts from him as well.

More tomorrow.

Calling all Developers…

the edge of town

This is what the edge of most towns look like in Reykjavik. They drop off to the beautiful rolling hills. It seems funny that people build and live so close to one another when there is so much land. On the other hand, it makes using the resources less wasteful I think.

Discovering the New Neighborhoods

A new neighborhood in Hafnafjordur

approaching that same neighborhood

So this was one of the first days I “officially” went out to look for answers to the questions of my project. This neighborhood is built on one of Reykjavik and surrounding suburbs highest hills. It is about 15 minutes out of the downtown area and the views from the area are of Reykjavik and the bay. This neighborhood is surrounded by other suburbs which are full of life and vigor. This new development will feed off of the neighboring areas and not need to sustain itself with it’s own new gym, school and grocery store. At this point I am not sure what sort of person will move to this area. The views and the sizes of the houses tell me that the area will be on the more expensive side. More on that soon.