Växjö

Situated in the center of southeast Sweden, the City of Växjö with its 87,000 inhabitants is an important regional administrative node and trading center. Växjö has a university, The Linnaeus University, and is also characterized by its many small companies, mostly within the service sector and IT sector. There are only few heavy industries. About 25 % of the population lives on the countryside or in smaller villages. This means that Växjö has both urban and rural characteristics. The geography includes large areas covered by forest and many lakes.
Famous personalities from Växjö include scientist and botanist Carl von Linné, world famous soprano and court singer, Christina Nilsson, authoress Elin Wägner, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pär Lagerkvist, athletics star Carolina Klüft, tennis player Mats Wilander, musicians from The Ark and Eurovision Song Contest winner, Charlotte Perelli.
Växjö has a long history of environmental work, starting with lake restoration in the 70’s and introduction of biomass replacing oil in the 80’s. Since 2007, Växjö is also known as the Greenest City in Europe. Already in 1996, a unanimous city council took the decision that Växjö is to become a Fossil Fuel Free City. This is supposed to be achieved by the year 2030. Reduction of CO2 emissions has so far been successful. The average CO2 emissions per capita are 2.4 tons, a reduction with 47% (2013) since 1993. There is also a tradition of the city administration cooperating with the business sector and the university in order to develop Växjö to become even greener.
In 2015 the City of Växjö will take part in the European Cycling Challenge for the first time. We are really looking forward to participate and hope that the competition will engage a lot of cyclists in the Municipality. Our goal is to become the Best cycling city in Europe, the city with the highest ratio of km per inhabitants.