Lund - What do you need to have an exciting life in a small city?

When one usually thinks of small towns, especially in Romania, first characteristics that come to mind are: boring, uninteresting, limits oneself development, etc.

However, today I was impressed to visit the town of Lund and see what high quality of life people living there have. Lund is an university town situated in southern Sweden, about one hour by train from Copenhagen..

So what makes life so exciting in Lund?

1) Infrastructure – transportation system is very extensive and the town is bicycle friendly. The town is very well connected by railway and highway to bigger centers like Copenhagen (1h distance), Malmö (15min), Götheborg and Stockholm.

2) People - Lund is one of the oldest social sciences university in Europe, dating back from the 17th century. Thus you can see a lot of young people on the streets, which makes the town alive.

3) Social capital – there is an opera, a theater, an arts’ center, a football stadium, lots, lots of green public places.

Furthermore, the town has a lot of associations, including sports associations like: kajak association and a kayak school.
There is a special lively atmosphere that the town has even on Sundays, a day of the week when many other cities are practically dead.

I would like to extend the third point, about the social capital as I find it very interesting how the town succeeded to attract and keep the creative class there. From my daytrip impressions I can conclude that:

- the arts center provides a meeting place for young and old inhabitants of the town. On Sundays it transforms itself into a self-service restaurant and the place is roaming of young people, families with small children running around as well as eldery people with a young spirit.

- the numerous caffees and restaurants all over the inner city allow everyone to have an intelligent conversation in an enjoyable atmosphere while tasting different national food specialities. This high variety of places impressed me in such a small town. However, we need to be aware that the town is in Sweden, a country which is more foreign friendly than many other EU countries.

- the town has incredible many green areas and parks and is crossed by several water canals. The latter allows young and old to practice all sorts of water sports, especially kajak , rowing and swimming.

There would be so much to analyse at this town and learn from its features. However, I feel that in this case the local government has played a critical role in understanding the needs of the inhabitants and being aware that they need to keep the creative class in order to foster a sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, local government is conscious of the competition that it faces with neighbouring towns like Malmö or Copenhagen.