Many Swedish people are allergic to tall buildings when it comes to city development. Even those that see themselves as progressive in many respects are extremely conservative when discussing the future skyline of Stockholm. There are even blogs (one of my favorite ones) about this phenomena.
One reason for being afraid is that people usually think of architectural monsters like Petronas Towers. Impressive, but they don't fit the "overall picture of the city". So, it's not strange that buildings in Stockholm are seldom taller than six stories. More importantly, though, I think that most people really can't envision how a tall building would actually look like in their backyard. Skepticism then comes natural.
The backyard of Atlasgatan, St Eriksgatan and Vulcanusgatan.
As it happens, there is a ten-story building right in my backyard. The architecture is typical of Stockholm, 1930s. The structure is placed between street-level St. Eriksplan and the lower-levelled Atlas, so it's not a real ten-story house in that sense. But it gives a pretty nice picture of how things would look like if common Stockholm architecture would be a bit higher without losing identity.
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