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

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

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

Transaction Spaces : Consumption Configurations and City Formation

Consumption forms and is formed by the city. How, when and where commodities are transacted is essential in this urban drama of mutual relationships. This thesis explores how consumption and everyday life in cities are interrelated. The specific objective is to analyse how commodity transaction situations are configured and constrained in time and space, and, how consumer service spaces are formed in and are part of city formation. Transactions are conceptualised as economically and socially situated material projects constituted by consumers, commodities and producers. Commodities and values are transferred and created through transaction spaces. The theoretical perspective is framed around consumption and production of spaces, and particularly informed by Hägerstrand’s time-geographical thinking and Lefebvre’s work on urban space. Methodologically different examples of consumption projects and spaces are used to discuss configurations and formations for commodity transactions. The thesis stresses material and time-spatial constraints for commodity transaction and it discusses the blurring of boundaries between what conventionally has been separate social and economic activities and places. Changing transaction configurations and the formation of consumer service spaces in the city are explored through analysis of different consumption places and commodities such as books, coffee and clothes and property development projects in Stockholm city centre. Transaction configurations display geographical and historical continuities and changes as well as time-spatial flexibility and spatial fixity. Transactions spaces are continuously formed and reformed through processes embedded in the global cultural economy, urban development and politics, as well as through people’s everyday life. Producers’ strategic production and consumers’ tactical appropriation of transactions spaces are accentuated as crucial in the spatial practice of transactions, places and city formation

Planning Nordic City Regions : Challenges and Opportunities

Contemporary challenges for the development of sustainable urban regions in the Nordic countries relate to how physical planning can contribute to green growth and city-regional competitiveness. More specifically, three types of challenges have been identified. The first relates to urban form and issues involving urban qualities and densification processes, accommodating rapid population growth, localisation and the mixing of urban functions. The second relates to social inclusion and segregation, the everyday life perspective and diversified lifestyles and mobility. Finally, while planning at the city-regional scale is increasingly seen as a way to meet these challenges, such a perspective also calls into question the traditional ways in which Nordic cities and regions are planned; the third type of challenge is therefore the fact that there is a recognised need for new and innovative forms of planning and governance

Urban Contractual Policies in Northern Europe

This working paper is based on two separately commissioned projects that Nordregio carried out during 2015–2016. The first project was commissioned by the Nordic Working Group for Green Growth: Sustainable Urban Regions set up under the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Committee of Senior Officials for Regional Policy (EK-R). This project relates to Chapters 2 to 5 of the present working paper, which describe the policy details and inner workings of urban contractualism in Norway, Sweden and Finland. The second project was commissioned by the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation. The objective was to review the experiences in France and England with different forms of contractualism. This relates to Chapters 6 to 8, which incorporate additional comparisons and critique of urban policies in France and, especially, the UK. The projects were a collaborative undertaking, with a number of national experts at Nordregio involved. Lukas Smas was the overall co-ordinator and editor. Liisa Perjo was responsible for Finland, Christian Fredricsson contributed the Norwegian part and Christian Dymén (now at Trivector) was responsible for Sweden. Julien Grunfelder was responsible for France while Timothy Andersson (currently a PhD Student at Tallinn University) wrote the UK section alongside contributions to the introduction and conclusion

Nordic ‘intercity connectivities’ in a multi-scalar perspective

Established notions and perceptions of the national, Nordic and even European and Global urban systems need to be challenged in order to formulate relevant future urban policies. This is one of the main conclusions of this study on the Nordic capital regions' national and international intercity connectivity.. Inspired by the work of the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) and the POLYNET-study (cf. Hall/Pain 2006) on exploring connectivity values for cities through intra-firm office networks, a 'modified Nordic-based bottom-up study' was designed and carried. The working paper illustrates and discusses the results of this quantitative study, which was conducted between January 2010 and December 2011. The Working Group for the exchange of experience and knowledge development (Urban Policies) has functioned as a kind of 'sounding board' throughout this process and has commented on the preliminary findings

Making ESPON knowledge more tangible for detecting regional potentials and challenges : five territorial approaches

The ESPON DeTeC (Detecting Territorial Potential and Challenges) project has developed five territorial approaches that can support regional stakeholders in revealing and detecting challenges and potential within a wider territorial context from a European perspective. The objective of this article is to present these approaches, which can be used to make ESPON knowledge more tangible and which can help in navigating through the inherent tensions, associated with the policy concept of territorial cohesion. In doing so, the article provides at first a brief introduction to the concept of territorial cohesion, a presentation and discussion of the territorial approaches with a particular focus on how they address exogenous challenges and endogenous potentials, conceptualize regional territories within relational spaces, and finally, how they direct attention towards territorial governance and the fluidity of scales and places. It is a practice oriented article that in conclusion discusses how territorial approaches can provide guidance for strategic local and regional policy making and how they help to open up new perspectives in local and regional development through the application of ESPON knowledge.ESPON DeTe

Region + planering = regionplanering – en komplicerad ekvation

I detta kapitel undersöker vi regional planering som generell företeelse och den svenska regionala planeringens besynnerligheter. Med utgångspunkt i detta är syftet med kapitlet att klargöra varför regional planering är en så komplicerad ekvation i Sverige idag