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16 Consuming Media

the real estate on the town square, with exception of the city hall and the library.
Office space and apartments were added, and by 1989 the new Solna Centre stood
completed. This followed a trend: Solna Centre was one of ten old city centres in the
Stockholm region that was renovated or rebuilt as a shopping centre between 1985
and 1995. These shopping centres often included community services, such as the
post office, employment offices and library, a form of cooperation less common in
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the United States than in Europe. The political and financial decisions which paved
the way for corporate ownership of major parts of Solna’s city centre led in turn to its
purchase in 2000 by Rodamco, a multinational corporation with headquarters in the
Netherlands. The shopping centre continues to expand, as adjoining streets and
passageways are closed off to traffic and glassed in, linking the centre to a large hotel
and with plans to eventually include the stadium.
The political economic history is often formulated as a success story, told and
retold by the mall manager, the mayor and chairman of the city council, and the
CEO for the Swedish division of Rodamco. This history lacks the visual specificity of
the signs of local history and fictive pasts the architect built into the centre. It is more
instrumental than the memories recounted by long-term residents and visitors to the
mall. Yet, in photographs, speeches and documents in the city’s archives, a history
emerges that holds up Solna as a model of cooperation between the political and
private sectors to develop a modern expansive city environment, and Solna Centre as
the outstanding example of what this cooperation has accomplished. In this narra-
tive, Solna Centre is the result of a tight and consistent cooperation between polit-
ical and commercial interests that tie the place and its architects to global economic
developments.

PUBLIC FOR WHOM?
The growing body of work on the politics of place was an important impetus for our
research on Solna Centre, in particular how questions of power and authority are
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actualized when private commercial interests take over public arenas. The contem-
porary shopping centre is often described as the ‘main street’ of contemporary urban
life, referring implicitly to the street as a public forum where all citizens are free to
participate in an open exchange of ideas. 38 Conceptualized as an idealized space of
free information exchange, the street works as a metaphor for the public sphere. 39
Referring to the shopping centre as ‘main street’ evokes a sense of loss over the decline
of the city street as a centre for the flow of a shared public (and American) social life.
It is an ideal that has formed conceptions of the shopping centre, extending far
beyond US borders, and including the shopping centre in Solna.
Entering Solna Centre, the visitor encounters the usual mix of stores, restaurants,
commercial office space and services found in any middle-sized Swedish city,
including, in addition, the library and city administration buildings, the post office
and state liquor store. The atmosphere of the street is underscored by visual references
to outdoor urban environments. Street signs and place names are set up on corners
and intersections. Large sections of the tile floor through the mall are laid in a size