Urban provincials by Elin Berge (29 images)

For the first time in history there are more people living in the cities than in the countryside. Consumption, rather than agriculture, is what represents our culture. One result is that larger areas transform into deserts of cloned shopping malls and residential areas. Another is that the story about the urban life -as it's told in the lifestyle magazines - seems to be more and more anemic. Maybe this phenomenon could be a first sign of a global trend, where the bohemians, the musicians...
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For the first time in history there are more people living in the cities than in the countryside. Consumption, rather than agriculture, is what represents our culture. One result is that larger areas transform into deserts of cloned shopping malls and residential areas. Another is that the story about the urban life -as it's told in the lifestyle magazines - seems to be more and more anemic. Maybe this phenomenon could be a first sign of a global trend, where the bohemians, the musicians and the artists - the ones who gave the cities its pulse and decadency - are leaving the metropolises? In the depopulated inland of Västerbotten, a province in northeastern Sweden, a bunch of Sweden's most celebrated independent creators have found space for realization and independence. Due to the inaccessible and unattractive locations, the houses are very inexpensive. For the same money people pay for small apartments in the big cities, they can become owners of territories combined with big detached houses. Successful musicians and other creative actors affected by the Do It Yourself-spirit, have moved to the countryside and taken pieces of the city with them. Yet, this escape from the city has nothing to do with the 1970s' utopian dream of a provincial paradise for the collective. Politically, it resembles more the ideas that characterized the straight-edge culture that dominated the biggest city in northern Sweden, Umeå, in the 1990's: politics on an extremely individual level. Then it was about the diet, now it's about where to live. Meet the people who want to set the rules of living themselves, the urban provincials with interests influenced by the city, that has chosen to live partly or full-time in the countryside: Musicians Frida Hyvönen, David Sandström and Dennis Lyxzén and the Gravmark-crew, a bunch of friends who all bought houses in one of Västerbotten's least attractive villages.
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