Editing Million Programme (section)

== Background ==
The housing shortage in Sweden before the start of the programme was a major political and social issue in Sweden. Between 1860 and 1960, Sweden had transformed from an agrarian nation to a highly [[industrialization|industrialized]] nation, which led to a large [[urbanization]] trend. The population in the countryside moved in large numbers to towns and cities after 1945. This urbanization following [[World War II]] was also encouraged by the authorities and governing establishment. After the war, as Swedish industry was unharmed, cities needed workers to produce the amount of goods demanded by the rest of war-destroyed Europe. The major cities of Sweden had in many cases had their last building boom in the late-19th century and were, by 1950, much too small to accommodate the rural population then flooding into the cities.

The increasing [[standard of living]] led to demands to dramatically decrease the population density and to abolish the old {{Langx|sv|Lort-Sverige|label=none}} (Dirt Sweden). This was made possible because of the outstanding [[Economic growth|growth]] Sweden had during the [[record years]] (rekordåren) in the 1950s and 1960s which led to a flood of income to the national treasury. This money was used to implement social reforms. The social democratic government implemented reforms to ensure the availability of land, such as new [[expropriation|land seizure]] rules for local authorities, as long as the landowner was planning to sell it to a private buyer. Another new law said that a municipality could build homes outside its border ("Lex Bollmora"), because rural municipalities near Stockholm could not afford to build so much.<ref>[http://www.tyreso.se/Se-och-gora/Upptack-Tyreso/Kulturhistoriska-miljoer/Tyreso-centrum-och-Bollmora/ Tyresö centrum och Bollmora] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160302085343/http://www.tyreso.se/Se-och-gora/Upptack-Tyreso/Kulturhistoriska-miljoer/Tyreso-centrum-och-Bollmora/ |date=2016-03-02 }} (Swedish)</ref>