A world-first district heating project in in Stockholm, Sweden has the potential to heat up to 10,000 households with excess heat from a data centre.

Nordic data centre operator DigiPlex and Stockholm Exergi (formerly Fortum Värme), the city’s district heating supplier, announced this week that they have have signed a large-scale heat re-use agreement.

Stockholm - Two self-driving buses started to share the road with pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles in a suburb of Stockholm. The shuttle buses travel at speeds of up to 24 km per hour.

Stockholm buses may serve as a model

Many see the buses as a model for the development of multimodal urban transport in smart cities in the near future.

Telecommunications company Ericsson has partnered with local Swedish public transportation and technology providers to conduct a six-month trial of two electric self-driving shuttle buses on public Stockholm roads. The goal is to test how the autonomous vehicles perform under real-word conditions for an extended period alongside cars, cyclists and pedestrians.

The fully-electric buses can carry 11 passengers (free of charge) at speeds of up to 24 km/h (15 mph) in non-ideal weather conditions. Their autonomous driving capabilities are supplied by Ericsson's open API Connected Urban Transport (CUT) platform, which allows the buses to communicate with sensor-enabled bus stops, traffic lights and road-signs.

While 2017 may already seem like a distant memory, it was certainly a year to remember for the Stockholm tech startup scene.

And as the new year kicks off, it will be exciting to see how Stockholm's entrepreneurial ecosystem builds on the accomplishments of the city's startup scene in 2017.

In just a few months, an emerging startup in Stockholm will attempt to change how urban farmers think about sustainability—and how building owners can benefit from being eco-friendly. A Swedish company called Plantagon is expected to open a basement farm under a 26-floor office tower in the city without paying a cent in rent.

How? If all goes according to plan, the heat from the LED lights helping to nourish the plants will be vented to the rest of the building, covering heating costs that are nearly three times the amount the building’s owners would charge to lease the space.

Stockholm is adopting queue and flow measurement technology from business intelligence company Blip Systems to help alleviate congestions and provide road users with more accurate, live traffic information.

The number of cars on the roads in the Swedish capital is constantly increasing leading to higher congestion, reduced road accessibility, and increased environmental pollution.

Therefore the city is using the Denmark-based firm’s BlipTrack queue and travel time measurement technology to increase travel time transparency, reduce environmental impact and optimise traffic flow as well as provide a detailed, up-close analysis of ongoing issues.

Stockholm is the fastest-growing capital in Europe, and as the population increases so does demand for housing and public infrastructure. There’s much to be done to make sure this growth is positive. From building more homes to imbuing neglected neighbourhoods with a sense of community, steps must be taken to accommodate for the expansion.

Building for better social integration is one of the key future challenges that the city is focusing on. It’s been a priority for Stockholm-based urban planning consultant, Mia Lundström, for several years now - and something she is working to improve throughout the city.

Stockholm is booming. Kjell Nordström, a famous Swedish economist, recently predicted the city will almost triple in population by 2045, to 4,5 million people.

In terms of both housing and population growth, Stockholm is now the fastest-growing capital in Europe, at least according to the city's chamber of commerce and key politicians. The explosive growth (est. 11% population growth 2015-2020) means surrounding areas and municipalities are becoming key in the city's outward expansion.

The Swedish housing website called Qasa started as a service for long-term subleasing of rooms and apartments. Now it’s taking making a move on the market for first-hand leases, by initiating collaborations with two real estate companies. The idea is to match users looking for leases with new apartments, Di Digital writes.

“Considering that the queue – at least in Stockholm – is so long that it can take many years for an applicant to find a first-hand lease through the municipal queue system, there is need for an alternative,” says Qasa co-founder Mattia Tosti.