Envisioning sustainable lifestyles in Stockholm’s urban development

The urban development in Stockholm, Sweden is an obvious example of the materialisation of the idea of a compact and traditional city as the sustainable city. This paper develops on this theme using the ongoing planning and development of the area Årstafältet in the south of Stockholm as example. With the central planning documents as empirical material, this paper investigates urban discourses that construct and give meaning to an area as urban/suburban, including the role of green space. The city and the urban are today better understood as ideological constructions than descriptions of a place or lifestyle. However, the city/country (or urban/suburban) division still lives on in planning. Årstafältet, on the edge of the inner city is interesting in this context, since it is currently being transformed from a typical Swedish post-war suburb into a post-modern 'urban area'. Its green space is also being re-conceptualised as a "world class park". At the same time as the urban has been coined the "quintessential floating signifier", urban densification and functional mix are considered the solutions to almost all problems. Certain constructions of the city and the urban lifestyle have an undisputed status, and others are given the role of the problem to be solved. In Swedish cities the problems to be solved are often found, or located, in the periphery. The suburb that used to represent the most modern in welfare state urban planning now represents its failure. This paper investigates how planning practice responds discursively to these representations

Positioning urban labs – a new form of smart governance?

In the current era, in which cities are considered key arenas for coping with a number of societal challenges, there is also renewed interest in the mobilisation of experimental practices within urban planning. A growing interest in innovative intiatives emphasising co-creation, exploration, experimentation, and evaluation, such as urban living labs must also be understood in relation to the uncertatinity regarding the modern growth paradigm and its institutional arrangements: “the pragmatist heritage of urban laboratories gains renewed strength in the current era in which the belief in modernity, progress and development is in crisis” (Karvonen & van Heur, 2014, p. 387). This paper provides a sympathetic critique of the notion of urban living labs and related expeimental practices from an urban planning and governance persepective. In this light, we argue that the core principels of urban living labs (i.e. co-creation, exploration, experimentation, and evaluation) offer a useful theortical frame to understand and position different informal self-organizing initiatives in contemporary urban development. Furthermore, we assert that, considered as a planning practice (or methodology), urban living labs can be construed as a temporary mode of soft governance which include a number of merits in terms of definig new innovative pathways for urban planning beyond business as usual thinking. However, caution must be taken due to the urban living lab’s inherent shortcomings in terms of demorcractic legitimacy, tendencies towards exclusiveness, and extreme temporality. In conclusion, we argue that urban living labs can be an environment for exploring new forms of smart urban governance through critical engagments with communicative planning theory and an explict focus on actor-relations

Urban Planning through Exhibition and Experimentation in Stockholm

In this paper we discuss findings of our case study on the making and implementation of the exhibition 'Experiment Stockholm' in 2015, which, based on artistic exhibits as well as a number of forums, aimed at generating creative narratives for the sustainable urban future in the Swedish capital city-region. Our analytical framework is informed by the emerging notion of 'urban living labs' across Europe as well as 'communicative' and 'actor-relational' planning theory', which is discussed in another paper within the poceedings of this conference (cf. Schmitt et al. 2016). We argue that the exhibition 'Experiment Stockholm' and the activities around it can be characterised as a soft mode of urban governance that can help to unlock creativity and to open up avenues for experimentation and alternative solutions in urban planning. However, caution must be taken to not overvalue such approaches, as our example implies a rather exclusive expert forum instead of a a mode of governance that might be associated with openness and wider engagement. In addition, our example illustrates the significance of suitable and unconventional methods, which otherwise considerably limits the innovative capacity of the participating stakeholders and their search for alternative solutions

Nordregio News 4 2016 : People and Cities

At Nordregio Forum 2015 ”Nordic City Regions in a Global Environment” all the international speakers emphasized unique qualities of Nordic cities’ in terms of human scale and sustainable solutions from a social and environmental perspective. The world’s leading expert on the so-called mega-projects, Professor Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University, stated that instead of investing in costly prestige projects we should continue to put people first in Nordic urban planning. This final issue of Nordregio News in 2016 looks closer at some projects and concepts where people are part of the planning process. Involving citizens early in the planning processes opens up for new ideas and approaches and including art when discussing architecture and urban planning might be the way forward when planning and building sustainable cities

Co-creation for socio-ecological urban development? - The case of Gröna Solberga

The purpose of this research report has been to study co-creation processes to promote socio-ecological sustainable urban development in the testbed "Gröna Solberga". The testbed was established in the residential area Solberga in southern Stockholm, with the aim of developing innovative solutions to the housing sector's sustainability challenges. The report provides an introduction to research on co-creation as a process for various actors who do or learn something through collaboration. In the analysis we also use research on Living Labs. Typical of these is to focus on the co-creation of innovative solutions in real housing environments, which Gröna Solberga is an example of. The term socioecological urban development is used in the report to study how ecological and social sustainability is taken into account in Gröna Solberga. The empirical part of the study analyzes co-creation and socioecological sustainability aspects in the planning and implementation of the activities carried out within the framework of the testbed. In practice, the co-creation processes in Gröna Solberga took place when the goals and competencies of the various actors met, partly in establishing and forming the test bed, and partly in planning and implementing pilot projects where different solutions were tested. The co-creation processes were also strongly influenced by various regulations, physical and technical conditions, which in practice set the framework for the opportunity to test new solutions. Gröna Solberga has evolved over time in terms of the roles and influence of the different actors involved. One conclusion is that co-creation in long-term testbeds in real living environments should be studied as dynamic processes where different framework conditions affect and change co-creation and roles over time.Den här rapporten finns endast på engelska. Svensk sammanfattning finns i rapporten

Redeveloping brownfields in the Central Baltic region

There is a high demand for redeveloping brownfield areas to make European cities grow in a more sustainable manner. As brownfield areas are often located within the urban structure, redeveloping them reduces the need to use green areas for new developments, and creates more compact cities. Remediating contaminated land in former industrial sites or harbour areas will also reduce environmental risks. This policy brief gives an overview of challenges for brownfield redevelopment in the Central Baltic region and is published as part of the Central Baltic INTERREG Baltic Urban Lab project.There is a high demand for redeveloping brownfield areas to make European cities grow in a more sustainable manner. As brownfield areas are often located within the urban structure, redeveloping them reduces the need to use green areas for new developments, and creates more compact cities. Remediating contaminated land in former industrial sites or harbour areas will also reduce environmental risks. This policy brief gives an overview of challenges for brownfield redevelopment in the Central Baltic region and is published as part of the Central Baltic INTERREG Baltic Urban Lab project

Sammanställning av mötesserien FRAMTIDSBILDER FÖR ETT KLIMATANPASSAT SVERIGE

Rapporten sammanfattar resultaten från en mötesserie strukturerad efter de prioriterade utmaningarna i den nationella strategin för klimatanpassning. Mötesserien är framtagen utifrån att Nationella expertrådet för klimatanpassning har beställt dokumentation om expertkunskap, idéer och förslag kring organisatoriska och fysiska lösningar för hur samhället kan anpassas för ett förändrat klimat. Resultaten från mötesserien kommer att arbetas in i sammanlagt sju framtidsbilder som kopplar till de prioriterade utmaningarna i den nationella strategin för klimatanpassning. Framtidsbildernas syfte är att vara tankeväckande för hur ett framtida samhälle, givet de utmaningar som klimatförändringarna skapar, kan komma att se ut

Local and regional approaches to demographic change

As a follow-up to the Handbook on Demographic Challenges in the Nordic countries, the Nordregio Working Paper Local and Regional Approaches to Demographic Change looks closer at examples of how to meet demographic challenges at local and regional levels

Business and biodiversity : A review of the companies' strategic work and follow-up

IVL Svenska Miljöinstitutet har på uppdrag av Naturvårdsverket genomfört en kartläggning av näringslivets uppföljning och arbete med biologisk mångfald. Syftet med kartläggningen är att bidra med kunskap och lärande exempel på hur företag kan utveckla uppföljningen och sitt strategiska arbete med biologisk mångfald, samt att synliggöra hinder och framgångsfaktorer. Kartläggningen syftar till att inspirera fler företag att utveckla sin uppföljning samt synliggöra vilka faktorer som är viktiga för att underlätta näringslivets uppföljning och arbete för Sveriges miljömål. Trots att intervjustudien inkluderar ett något begränsat urval av företag visar resultaten tydligt att samtliga företag pekar på en komplexitet kring hur man ska mäta och följa upp påverkan på biologisk mångfald. De intervjuade företagen lyfter förståelse kring påverkan inom hela sin värdekedja som en viktig framgångsfaktor. Det kan också vara lämpligt att dra nytta av det viktiga arbete som ofta sker inom klimatområdet för att etablera ett strategiskt arbete kopplat till biologisk mångfald och strukturera sin uppföljning. Det är dock viktigt att vara vaksam på de faktiska skillnader som finns mellan dessa båda områden.IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute has on the behalf of Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, conducted a review of how Swedish companies work with biodiversity. The purpose of the review was to gain knowledge and identify good examples on how companies can develop their strategic work on biodiversity, and how they can follow up and measure their impacts on biodiversity. An important part of the review has also been to highlight obstacles and success factors for companies’ biodiversity work. The review aims to inspire more companies to work with and follow up biodiversity, and to highlight actions that the business sector can take in order to achieve Sweden’s environmental quality objectives. Even though this review only includes interviews with nine companies, the results clearly indicate a complexity of measuring and following up companies’ impacts on biodiversity.  The interviewed companies continuously emphasise the importance of analysing and addressing the impacts on biodiversity throughout the whole value chain. Companies can also use the knowledge, processes and lessons-learned from their climate-related actions to establish strategic work with biodiversity and to create a follow-up framework. Although it is important that biodiversity is discussed alongside climate change as a dual challenge, it is important to be careful with the differences between these two areas