Sweden has to move an entire city!

Kiruna is Sweden's most northern city which has built up around an iron mine. The iron mine has now gotten so big however, that the ground underneath the city has been weakened. This has already started causing buildings to crack and collapse.

LKAB is the mining company responsible for this and has proposed to spend the equivalent of $1.4 billion dollars taking apart the city and rebuilding it 2 miles east. Many of Kiruna’s citizens are worried that LKAB will demolish many homes without rebuilding them or that the new homes will be too expensive to live in. The city relies on the mine however and LKAB has promised to offer help.

The design of the new city centre was made into a competition for architects around the world and won by a company called White Architects. Work has already begun and the new city centre should be complete by 2019.

Different mining techniques affect the surrounding environment in a number of ways. Learn more with Twig film- Quarrying: The Impacts