"Jakriborg at Hjerup between Malmo and Lund" Hjärup by Manganus

Hjerup was until the mid-20th century nothing but a farm on the fertile plain south of Lund. The plain stretches some 25 kilometres eastward from the O"resund coast line and is notable for the most arable soil in Scandinavia. The farm belongs to the rather smallish and insignificant village of Uppa'kra.

Uppa'kra is small but old and had existed for a thousand years as the predecessor of Lund, until the town in the year 990 was moved to a new and more secure location a few miles away.

Like almost all other Swedish villages, Uppa'kra had been split around year 1800, and most farms were moved out and rebuilt solitarly in the periphery. In 1856 the railroad Malmo"-Lund was built, and Uppa'kra got a railway station some three kilometres from the village proper, not far away from the farm Hjerup.

However, nothing much happened until the 1960s when the farmers realized that they would make good profit if they sold their land to a construction company that created a new suburb Hja"rup with almost a thousand detached houses. This district is architechturally dull.

However, from the 1990s, a new district called Jakriborg has slowly emerged on the other side of the railroad. The architectural style is inspired by the looks of pre-industrial towns in the region along the coasts of the southern Baltic and the North Sea, between the Flanders and Tallinn, of which maybe the old Hansa city Lu"beck is the best known representative.

As an unusual representative of an architecture that makes a clear break with the Functionalism that has been dominant for much of the 20th century, and that clearly connects to the nearby medieval towns of Scania, Jakriborg is one of the sites I show most foreign visitors.

The pointed gables are significant

The pointed gables are what maybe first strikes the visitor as remarkable. So different from the houses further North - in the "proper" parts of Scandinavia. But culturally this southern tip of Scandinavia has more in common with Denmark, The Netherlands, and northern Germany. And these houses are a fresh reminder.

This architectural style is clearly a reaction against the modernism that has created residental districts no-one really wishes to live in. Jakriborg may be labled as New Urbanism, but if we are to believe the constructors, the brothers Krister and Jan Berggren, they consider themselves to be independent and uninfluenced by any New Urbanism ideology: Contrary to dogmatic New Urbanism districts, this is not built for a cultural elite, and it's not more expensive than other new housing constructions. Currently Jakriborg has only rental flats, despite many houses look fairly much like owner-occupied. The rent is moderate, for Swedish conditions, at approximately 100 euro a year and square metre.

In effect, Jakriborg is a suburb of Malmo", Lund, ...and Copenhagen.

• Pros:Nice to the eye.
• Cons:A suburb. Pretty quiet when people are at work, and still quiet when they tired have returned from work.