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concerns its status as combined shopping centre and city centre, and thus as both
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private and public space. It is the municipal square and main streets that have been
placed within glass walls and under the control of a private property owner,
Rodamco. This peculiar mixture of public and commercial interests relates to basic
societal contradictions between state, market and civil society. The commercial inter-
ests of market agents intersect conflictually with state interests administered by
municipality institutions and with private and public interests seated in civil society,
defended in the public sphere by individuals, groups, associations and the media.
There were still several traces of the public character of space within Solna Centre.
One such trace was the signs with street names left on the corners of buildings: ‘Solna
Square’, ‘Town Hall Walk’, etc. Another was the Hollywood Stairs in the middle of
the centre, used for various events, including both commercial sales events and
certain communal celebrations where the room fulfilled a more traditional function
as the true common and public centre of the town, for instance at certain seasonal
festivals like Christmas or the typically Swedish Santa Lucia celebrations. The name
of the stairs was supposed to remind people of Solna’s honourable history as the
cradle of Swedish film-making, and there was also a wall painting with Greta Garbo,
who was first filmed there.
The privately owned space also contained certain public utilities. There was a big
and active public library, in which citizens could dwell, read and listen, with no
demands for payment. There was also a town hall that also offered certain public
services for citizens. A small cinema didn’t manage to survive, but it was the last
remnant of a communal Citizens’ House, with rooms for conferences, meetings and
theatre activities. This was gradually taken over by commercially run shops and
offices, as part of a general trend towards privatization and commodification of the
public spaces of communication in Solna.
The interplay between commercial and municipal interests includes both cooper-
ation and competition. The local centre manager clearly saw the advantages of having
non-commercial public and cultural service institutions integrated in the centre:
We want a good co-operation with the municipality. It wants to keep a high level
of general service in Solna Centre. And thus Solna Centre becomes the evident
choice for Solna city to arrange various activities. Which attracts people … We
have a very good library that draws lots of people. There is a job centre; there is
a citizen forum, a regional social insurance office. And all that generates people,
which in turn after a while generates trade. And we do have a rather big traffic
with visitors here.
The museum curator who was responsible for the visual design of Solna city in her
turn explained that the municipality had ‘a mighty good co-operation’ with Solna
Centre, which allegedly understands that ‘the combination of the commercial and
the cultural’ is ‘a rather wonderful mixture’, while it is important ‘to give and take
from each other, that it is important for business to also have an artistic or visionary
outlook, to have this mix’. She repeatedly referred to art in terms of ‘enrichment’: