Regional development expectations in the Öresund region - travel patterns and cross border mobility

The opening of the Oresund bridge is the ultimate break through in cutting travel time between, East-Denmark and Scania, Sweden. The final implementing of the TEN project makes it finally possible to commute on a daily basis in the region between the two countries. The new link either has enlarged the Copenhagen region as a northern hub or created a new Scandinavian hub with Copenhagen and Malmö as core centres. This new common Oresund region provides an optimal location for central European and international firms that try to penetrate the Nordic markets from a location close to the European centre but close to the majority of customers due to its economy of scale. One of the questions for the future development of the region is if travel patterns at the two sides of the strait can adapt to the new circumstances. In relation to that it can be asked if the abilities already exist today to cope with the demands of the changed regions structure for work commuting. Going one step further increased regional identity will foster a change of moving patterns. An overview over the living and housing situation in the region try to analyse if it is today favourable reconsidering permanently the place of residence to come closer to the economical centre of the region, to reduce unproductive commuting or increase quality of life. The paper tries to give answers to these and other questions related to willingness and ability to commute in the region, using the results of a household survey that has been performed in the Oresund region. The survey bases on a random sample Danes and Swedes living in the new region that have been asked about their relation to the region and future expectation and willingness to commute. Starting from the assumption that individual total average travel time does not increase but accessible area this paper tries to summarize the preferences of different peergroups and their adapting ability for fostering a common region.

On Analysing Changes in Urban Form ? Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues

The urban structure is a result of human actions and affects its users in a cyclic relationship. The political systems on different levels put attention to the urban structure and its relationship to the ecological and sociological and economical systems. This attention is expressed on the European level, for instance, in the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) where a spatial structure according to the polycentric urban system principle is recommended. The first aim of this study is to discuss spatial location factors for the temporal and geographical development of urban residential structures. The second aim of the study is to investigate the relative importance of the discussed location factors using a segment of a Swedish county as a test case. The basic question is whether the location of new residential areas is determined through market forces or political decisions. Thus, the paper addresses the fundamental question of the efficiency of land-use planning decisions. By geo-coding existing geographical real estate tax databases and combining the information with existing digital maps and satellite images the spatial development over time will be analysed in a geographic information system. By non-parametric statistical tests and multiple regression analyses the importance of individual factors relative to one another will be determined. The analysis is performed at as low a geographical level as possible. If the urban development exhibits some regularity, and hence is not totally random with the regards to the explanatory factors in question, then is it possible to investigate the development as a system of spatial causalities. The study is based on earlier investigations by, among others, Rietveld & Wagtendonk (2000), Filion, Bunting & Warriner (1999) and de la Barra (1989). However, the current investigation will use disaggregated geographical data on micro level with a high spatial resolution. The case study is performed in an area affected by high speed commuting train from the middle of the analysis period 1980-2000, which calls for also a detailed representation of the transport system. References: Rietveld P & Wagtendonk AJ (2000), The location of new residential areas in the Netherlands: A statistical analysis for the period between 1980 and 1995, Paper presented to the 40th congress of the European Regional Science Association (2000), Barcelona, Spain. Filion P., Bunting T. och Warriner K. (1999). The entrenchment of urban dispersion: Residental preferences and location patterns in the dispersed city. Urban Studies, 36, (8), 1317-1347. de la Barra T. (1989). Integrated land use and transport modelling: decision chains and hierarchies. New York. Cambridge university press.

Debunking public service? Meta-academic and personal reflections from inside the Swedish Public Service Broadcasting Commission

During the last half of 2015, a number of Swedish publishing and broadcasting companies—Bonnier, Schibsted Sweden, Mittmedia, Bauer Group—agreed to fund and establish a national Public Service Broadcasting Commission. The purpose was to initiate a public debate about the behaviour and operation of Swedish public service broadcasters—in particular, how they affected the commercial media market, and generally, to discuss the role of national public service broadcasting in a networked media environment. I was a Commission member, and this article describes the background, debates and proposals put forward by the Commission. On one hand, it focuses the work of the Commission with an emphasis on the different public debates the Commission stirred. On the other hand, the article will in a meta-scholarly fashion elaborate on the academic tradition of doing scholarly work focused on public service in Sweden. A recurrent notion in the article is hence meta-academic. Importantly, the article stresses the scholarly bias in favour of public service that is usually present within this tradition (primarily emanating from the field of political communication). Thus, the article is devoted to various debates surrounding the work of the Commission and the role of academics within these discussions (including myself). Finally, the article presents a few thoughts about what it might mean for academics to be (or become) lobbyists

Comparative Studies of Regional Planning Models - With Special Emphasis on a Case-Study of Southwestern Skane

Since 1979, the Regional Development Task at IIASA is engaged in a case study of economic and demographic development, land-use and related problems in the region of southwestern Skane in Sweden. The case study is the third in a series of attempts made by the Regional Development Task to apply systems analytic methods to regional planning problems in regions with different economic structures, resource endowments and organizational settings. The research in the Swedish case study is done in collaboration with the Southwest Skane Municipal Board, as a part of their ongoing work in physical and public transport planning for the metropolitan region of Malmo, and its neighboring municipalities. The research is partly sponsored by the Swedish Council for Building Research. In the case study an integrated systems analytic package of models is used which has been developed within the Regional Development Task in cooperation with a group of Swedish researchers and planners. In that package, separate models have been developed for interregional economic and demographic problems, and for intraregional land-use problems. The current paper sets the Swedish case study in relation to the three other case studies in the Regional Development Task. It is a first attempt to make a comparison of the variants of regional systems analysis adopted by the Task under different demo-economic and institutional settings. It should be followed by more careful comparative judgements in the future

The Regional Development Consequences of Close-Down of Nuclear Power Plants in Sweden

Energy planning is one of the most important elements of contemporary long-term planning. The central role of the energy sector in economic development has been stressed by many researchers and policy-makers. The discussion in many countries of policies for introducing at a larger scale renewable energy resources into their energy systems has a clear regional connotation. In spite of this fact most economic energy studies lack the regional dimension. There are several reasons for introducing regional elements in an energy analysis in a country as Sweden. Renewable energy resources are located in sparsely populated areas. The energy-dependent parts of the economy are concentrated geographically. The climatic conditions make the heating of buildings differentially costly in different parts of the country. The current paper gives an example of regional impact studies of national energy scenarios. It relates to the investigations in Sweden of the effects on the economic, regional, environmental, and social development of dispensing with nuclear power. The work of a subgroup in a Government Commission preparing for a nuclear referendum in 1980 is described, especially as regards the methods and models used for the regional analyses

Some Salient Issues in Policy Evaluations of Urban Housing Markets

Housing problems are truly universal. For households the residential choice decision is basic both in view of its influence on their welfare and the substantial portion of their budget it claims. For regions and nations, housing determines centrally the investment sacrifices and has strong influences on the financial markets. These significances of housing problems have entailed a whole range of laws, regulations, and policies to afflict the functioning of the markets both from quantity and distributional aspects. Different nations and regions have developed different arsenals of policy tools. Some attempts have been made to review and compare the national housing policies and the methods used in policy assessment. Such comparative studies are less common at the regional level. The current Working Paper addresses the contemporary issues of policy evaluations of the working of urban housing markets by suggesting a conceptual framework for such analyses, based on systems analytic considerations. The paper contains a claim for the development of a new generation of housing market models for policy evaluations based on modern theories of probabilistic choice and structural change in dynamic systems. It provides an agenda for an international research project on urban housing policies at a time when management and renewal have replaced expansion as traits of urban fabric

Research infrastructure, networks of science and regional development - the case of Oskarshamn

Final deposit of nuclear waste is a a global engineering challenge. The Swedish nuclear industry has spent more than thirty years in investigating the best sites and technologies for the final storage of nuclear waste. Universities have been involved as experts in this massive R&D activity. The result has been a well-documented body of knowledge for decision support. At the same time global research infrastructure networks have been developed. More than 140 PhD theses have been produced as one of the outputs. Eleven of these PhD holders are now full professors. Based on earlier work on research infrastructures Lund, Hamburg, and Kiruna, see for instance Snickars and Falck (2015), we have addressed the question of the role of a technical research infrastructure for the development of fields of engineering and natural science at the same time generating regional development. It has provided an opportunity to empirically study the use of research infrastructure in a specialized technology field. At the same time the study investigates a municipality’s efforts to specialize in research without a university in the vicinity. Do networks of cooperation differ between research groups and research infrastructures? Can a region build its smart specialization on research infrastructure? Can research equipment once belonging to a company be transformed to a public research infrastructure asset? Our results indicate that research infrastructures as the ones in Oskarshamn are powerful creators of international research networks. It is possible although somewhat difficult in view of scattered systems for data provision to assess their academic and societal impacts. Engineering research has its own networks of university-industry and industry-university interaction where value is cogenerated dynamically. In the study we have come some way towards empirically analyzing the networks of research cooperation between industry and university using methods of infrastructure theory and network analysis