To Örebro University

Allt fler människor koncentreras till städer och andra urbana samhällen. Stadsmiljön är attraktiv och efterfrågad samtidigt som den innebär sociala, psykiska  och fysiska påfrestningar för invånarna. Förändrade villkor för utvecklingen av städer och regioner har lett till en ökad efterfrågan på mångvetenskaplig kunskap och kompetens. När det FORMAS-finanserade forskningsprogrammet Staden som livsmiljö - vision och verklighet formulerades tod vi fasta på den motsägelsefulla bilden av staden med plats för både visionerna och verkligheten. Den teoretiska ramen kring projekten kombinerar statsvetenskapligt förankrad regimteori med vardagslivsteori som hämtat inspiration från strömningar i kulturgeografi, sociologi och andra discipliner. Detta utgör slutrapporten för projektet.

This book looks at the consequences and implications of an emerging new way of local politics in Europe. With the term "governance", changes in the political and social constitution of cities are analysed. Based on theoretical and empirical studies by scholars from ten countries, different aspects of "urban governance" will be presented.

In 2005, the Nord Stream Consortium launched a pipeline project with the intention to bring Russian natural gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. Although this raised crucial issues of Russia-EU-Sweden relations on security, energy and the environment the focus of this report is on the Gotland local government response to the Nord Stream approach, thus illustrating the need for a transversal human geography-political studies perspective. Situated in the heart of the Baltic Sea, and in line with the established Swedish governmental "remiss" procedure of commission and referral for consideration the Gotland authority was requested by the Swedish Government to make a statement about the pipeline. How-ever, before the government was even asked for permission the Nord Stream Consortium with Russian Gazprom as the major shareholder turned to the Gotland authority with an offer they after some conflict-ridden twists and turns, manifested in three policy lines as described in the report, decided not to refuse. A narrative inspired analytical ap-proach is applied to dissect the more or less contradictory standpoints and legitimating arguments posed by the actors in the political process preceding the local authority decision to accept the Nord Stream offer, i.e. the local scale actors were provoked to take a stand on a big issue raised by a huge multinational company. By in detail examining the local political repercussions of the energy project the case study contributes to a trans-disciplinary understanding of multi-scalar/multi-level govern-ance. In an epilogue the report also highlights the sudden turnaround of the local narrative in autumn 2016 when Gotland Regional Authority was on the brink of making a deal with Nord Stream II. The turnaround flashlights the geopolitical position of the island in the crossfire of inter-ests concerning the Baltic Sea Region.

Dipping in to the North explores how changing mobility and migration isaffecting the social, economic, cultural, and environmental characteristicsof sparsely populated areas of northern Sweden (and places like it). Itexamines who lives in, works in, and visits the north; how and why this haschanged over time; and what those changes mean for how the north mightdevelop in the future. The book draws upon deep expertise and knowledgefrom a range of social scientists, presenting valuable insights in anaccessible style for a broad audience.

Restructuring of central and local government relations has occurred in a number of countries during the 1980s, and has been a striking phenomenon even in such different countries as Poland, Sweden and the US. In the first part of the article a resource framework is presented, designed to make basic comparisons of these relations between different countries. Five sets of resources are identified: constitutional-legal, regulatory, financial, political and professional resources. It is argued that local-government disposal of such resources provides a potential for local discretion. The applicability of the framework is illustrated by reference to a study of Poland, Sweden and the US, focusing on the restructuring of central and local government relations in these countries during the 1980s. The conclusion is that decentralization has occurred in all three cases, especially in terms of regulatory and other non-financial resources. However, in Sweden and the US this trend has been counterbalanced by centralization of financial control. In Poland the post-communist revolution has paved the way for a restoration of the pre-war local self-government system. Democratic elections at the local level are seen as crucial to break down the old, centralized party-state system, and to reintroduce a dual local government system. In all three cases economic pressure, related to the individual countries' positions in the world capitalist system, seems to have been the main driving force beind the decentralization processes. However, the forms, magnitude and effects of decentralization must be seen in relation to the specific political economies and histories of the three countries. Thus, to understand the causes, mechanisms and effects of central–local government restructuring in depth one has to relate the resource approach to a broader theoretical framework.

During real-socialism in Central and Eastern Europe the scope for local government discretion was marginal. Local government had a very low degree of legitimacy, and this is something that poses a big problem when it comes to developing local self-government under postsocialism. It seems as if most citizens are prepared to pin their hopes on new central leaders, while they are still very hesitant with regard to local self-governance. Various expressions of localism appeared during the first three to four years of postsocialist development. However, today it seems as if the tide has turned in favour of more centralist hopes and policies. This development is discussed in the light of some of the arguments commonly raised in favour of centralism and localism, respectively, highlighting the complex relationships between the two concepts and their current manifestations. In the concluding section some ideas are put forward concerning the issue how to bridge the gap between centralism and localism, and there is also a reminder that some of the current developments of local government in Eastern and Central Europe are similar to those in Western Europe. This makes a strong argument in favour of intensified transnational contacts between academics, practitioners, and ordinary citizens with an interest in developing local self-government.

Il est courant de légitimer la gouvernance urbaine, en général, et les partenariats, en particulier, en faisant valoir leur efficacité au regard des formes traditionnelles de gestion publique, tout en glissant, voire en faisant l’impasse, sur leur lien avec la démocratie. La plupart des ouvrages invoquent en effet l’efficacité pour appuyer l’approche partenariale, alors que la capacité qu’on lui prête de créer une synergie entre les partenaires arrive normalement en tête de liste. Définir si un partenaire est efficace ou non relève, bien sûr, de l’empirisme mais il est vrai que la rhétorique de l’efficacité est assez puissante pour justifier, de toutes façons, la création de partenariats. On leur assigne plus ou moins la fonction de résoudre n’importe quel problème de gouvernance. Partant du débat théorique sur les partenariats et leur rôle dans la gouvernance urbaine et se fondant sur des exemples provenant d’études empiriques récentes, le présent article a pour principal objet d’élaborer une stratégie destinée à conduire des recherches internationales comparatives sur les partenariats et la gouvernance urbaine. Il s’achève par l’évocation d’incidences politiques découlant du rôle croissant des partenariats dans la gouvernance urbaine, et la mise en lumière de leur lien avec la démocratie, lequel était jusqu’ici négligé.

Urban governance in general and partnerships in particular are commonly legitimised as being more efficient than traditional forms of government, whereas their relationship to democracy is only mentioned in passing or even neglected. In most of the literature a number of efficiency–related arguments in favour of the partnership approach are presented, although its alleged capacity to create synergetic effects for the partners normally ranks number one. Of course it is an empirical question, whether a partnership is efficient or not, but the point is that the efficiency rhetoric is strong enough to legitimise the creation of partnerships anyhow. Partnerships are more or less ascribed the function to solve any governance problem. Taking its point of departure in a theoretical discussion of partnerships and their role in urban governance, and using illustrations taken from recent empirical studies, the main aim of the paper is to develop a research strategy for cross–national/cross–country research on partnerships and urban governance. The paper concludes by discussing some policy implications of the growing role of partnerships in urban governance, high–lighting their so–far neglected relationship to democracy.

During recent decades, rented housing estates all over Europe have become the object of a flood of programmes aimed at physical and social renewal and regeneration. Drawing upon network theory, in this paper a conceptual framework is presented and tentatively applied in a comparative study of rented housing regeneration and area improvement in England and Sweden. Although the contours of broadly similar policy communities in the two countries could be found, there were also striking differences in network formation. Thus, in England the Department of the Environment seems to play a more prominent role in policy-making and implementation than its Swedish counterpart, while in Sweden the municipal housing companies, the local authorities and the tenants' organisations take part more actively in the policy process than is the case in England. Closely related to these findings it is argued that there are also some lessons for practical use that could be learnt from the analysis, although one then has to be careful not to overlook the context-bound specificities, at the national as well as the local level.

SAMMANFATTNING

Behöver Sverige en samlad nationell stadspolitik? Det är den övergripande fråga som är

föremål för granskning och reflektion i denna artikel. Bakgrunden är det önskemål om och de

argument för en sådan politik som framförts av Arkitekturmuseet, Boverket, Formas och

Riksantikvarieämbetet i en gemensam rapport. I artikeln sätts frågan in i ett bredare stadsoch

urbanpolitiskt sammanhang med förankring i aktuell samhällsvetenskaplig forskning.

Centrala frågeställningar är bland annat: Vilka problem har ansetts påkalla en nationell

stadspolitik och varför? Vilka redan etablerade politikområden berörs? Vilka är de politiska

förutsättningarna? Kan en nationell politik för stadsutveckling organiseras som stärker de

regionala och lokala nivåerna och i så fall hur?

Efter en kort presentation av fenomenet stadspolitik som begrepp och vision riktas blickarna

mot tre förhållanden som påverkar förutsättningarna för en samlad nationell stadspolitik:

först statens förändrade roll från sammanhållen välfärdsstat till bantad och

samarbetssökande stat, sedan politikens fragmentering och slutligen den starka

samförståndsanda som präglar det offentliga samtalet om hållbarhet, inte minst om hållbar

stadsutveckling. Som empirisk referenspunkt görs därefter korta, analytiskt styrda

beskrivningar av fem potentiella spår för en eventuell samlad nationell stadspolitik:

klimatpolitik, områdesorienterad projektpolitik för social inkludering, regional tillväxt- och

utvecklingspolitik, kulturpolitik och arkitekturpolitik.

I en avslutande del konstateras att det i svenska kommuner och regioner visserligen bedrivs

olika former av stads/regionpolitik, ofta med ekonomisk tillväxt som främsta ambition.

Däremot finns ingen samlad eller samordnad nationell stads- eller regionpolitik. I den mån

man kan tala om en nationell stadspolitik så är den fortsatt partiell, ofta implicit och i stora

drag fragmenterad på olika sektorer. En annan slutsats är att stadspolitik måste diskuteras

och skapas i nära samband med de parallella processer som nu pågår i syfte att skapa nya

regionala strukturer för offentlig flernivåpolitik. Utan en av staten orkestrerad, eller

åtminstone legitimerad, regionpolitik är det svårt att tänka sig en motsvarande stadspolitik

med beaktande av de delvis olika intressen som följer av orters läge, näringsgeografiska

struktur och storlek.

Resan mot en samlad, och hållbar, nationell stadspolitik får inte väja för att konfrontera och

självkritiskt granska det samförståndstänkande som i hög grad präglar synen på hållbarhet.

Begreppet är i grunden värdeladdat och därför behöver intressemotsättningar och konflikter

identifieras och konfronteras, vilket i sin tur betyder att fullständigtt samförstånd inte alltid

kan nås. Det är ur ett demokratiskt perspektiv angeläget att politiska partier och andra

former av organiserade samhällsintressen förtydligar sina förhållningssätt till såväl

regionpolitik som hållbar (stads)utveckling och lyfter fram och driver sina argument,

ståndpunkter och slutsatser på ett sätt som gör det möjligt för medborgarna att ta ställning

till olika alternativ.

För att ge möjlighet till ett fortsatt och fördjupat lärande av pågående stadsbyggnadsprojekt

är det angeläget att den forumverksamhet som Delegationen för hållbara städer inledde får

en långsiktig fortsättning. En arena som samlar representanter för offentlig politik och

förvaltning, näringsliv, civilsamhälle och forskning kan, som delegationen själv föreslagit, bli

en plattform där man byter erfarenheter, diskuterar och föreslår nya stadspolitiska initiativ.

Utan att ta ställning till detaljer i förslaget är det lätt att instämma i detta huvudbudskap.

This chapter examines ‘partnership’ as one common manifestation of urban governance. Partnership in the Habitat II context has a very wide scope, encompassing international support programmes as well as capacity-building programmes at the national and sub-national levels. The partnership concept has a stronger ideological load than other members of the network family. In view of the fact that the label of the common policy target, ‘urban regeneration’, is very ambiguous, caution is warranted when trying to explain the policy effects of regeneration partnerships. After the 1973 economic crisis, urban policies changed dramatically towards regeneration, though the dual focus on the inner city and the suburbs remained. Traditional mechanisms of accountability in representative democracy were never designed to cope with multi-organizational, fragmented policy systems. With the introduction of citizen participation in urban governance, planners can contribute to the democratic debate. The partnership approach in urban politics has a rhetorical strength and a mythical appeal.

In a recently published study of the political psychology of globalisation and Muslims in the West, the authors identify three ideal type strategies of identity formation among Muslim immigrants: retreatism, essentialism, and engagement. The authors themselves normatively argue in favour of the latter, suggesting that both majority and minority communities in society should strive to become “postnationalist, self-dialogical, and engaged in dialogue with a range of others. Activist, assertive, and agonistic rather than antagonistic”. They conclude that “Muslims are positioned to contribute toward new cosmopolitical potentialities for a renewed pluralistic global order” (Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking 2010). Starting with the notion that emotional geography “commonly concerns itself with the emotions that people feel for one another and, more extensively for places, for landscapes, for objects in landscapes and in specific situations” (Pile 2010: 15), we want to explore how Muslim immigrants arriving in Sweden emotionally and in action identify with and take part in social life at their place of arrival, i.e. their housing estate, their town/city and in their new country more generally. Focus will be on a few selected people, and a civic association, who openly refer to their Muslim identities as a faith-based driver in order to help their fellow immigrants to adapt to and identify themselves as members of their new habitat. Methodologically we will draw upon narratives told by Muslim immigrants, a recently established association of Muslim adult education, media articles, and observations done by ourselves. We will also, briefly, draw the attention to the “counter-emotional” islamophobian stance against Muslim immigrants in general as displayed in Swedish society. In conclusion we will reflect upon and critically discuss the challenges and potentialities of an emotionally engaged Muslim standpoint in front of a rather ignorant, partly even negative domestic population.

This article sets out to explore how Muslims in Sweden identify with and create social life in the place where they live, that is, in their neighbourhood, in their town/city and in Swedish society at large. In a paradoxical religious landscape that includes a strong Lutheran state church heritage and a Christian free-church tradition, in what is, nevertheless, a very secular society, Muslims may choose different strategies to express their faith, here roughly described as “retreatist,” “engaged” or “essentialist/antagonistic.” Focusing on a non-antagonistic, engaged stance, and drawing upon a combination of authors' interviews, and materials published in newspapers and on the Internet, we first bring to the fore arguments by Muslim leaders in favour of creating a Muslim identity with a Swedish brand, and second give some examples of local Muslim individuals, acting as everyday makers in their neighbourhood, town or city. Third, we also give attention to an aggressively negative Islamophobic stance expressed both in words and in physical violence in parts of Swedish society. In conclusion, we reflect upon the challenges and potentialities of an emotionally engaged, dialogue-orientated Muslim position facing antagonistic interpretations of Islam, and an ignorant, sometimes Islamophobic, environment.

The article describes and reflects upon how multi-level governance and planning in Sweden have been affected by and reacted upon three pending major challenges confronting humanity, namely climate change, migration and the Covid-19 pandemic. These ‘crises’ are broadly considered ‘existential threats’ in need of ‘securitisation’. Causes and adequate reactions are contested, and there are no given solutions how to securitise the perceived threats, neither one by one, no less together. Government securitisation strategies are challenged by counter-securitisation demands, and plaguing vulnerable groups in society by in-securitising predicaments. Taking Sweden as an example the article applies an analytical approach drawing upon strands of securitisation, governance and planning theory. Targeting policy responses to the three perceived crises the intricate relations between government levels, responsibilities, capacities, and actions are scrutinized, including a focus upon the role of planning. Overriding research questions are: How has the governance and planning system – central, regional and local governments - in Sweden responded to the challenges of climate change, migration and Covid-19? What threats were identified? What solutions were proposed? What consequences could be traced? What prospects wait around the corner? Comparing crucial aspects of the crises’ anatomies the article adds to the understanding of the way multilevel, cross-sectional, hybrid governance and planning respond to concurrent crises, thereby also offering clues for action in other geopolitical contexts. The article mainly draws upon recent and ongoing research on manifestations of three cases in the Swedish context. Applying a pragmatic, methodological approach combining elements of securitisation, governance and planning theories with Carol Lee Bacchi’s ‘What is the problem represented to be’ and a touch of interpretive/narrative theory, the study reveals distinct differences between the anatomies of the three crises and their handling. Urgency, extension, state of knowledge/epistemology, governance and planning make different imprints on crises management. Sweden’s long-term climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies imply slow, micro-steps forward based on a combination of social-liberal, ‘circular’ and a touch of ‘green growth’ economies. Migration policy displays a Janus face, on the one hand largely respecting the UN refugee quota system on the other hand applying a detailed regulatory framework causing severe insecurity especially for minor refugees wanting to stay and make their living in Sweden. The Covid-19 outbreak revealed a lack of foresight and eroded/fragmented responsibility causing huge stress upon personnel in elderly and health care and appalling death rates among elderly patients, although governance and planning slowly adapted through securitising policies, leading to potential de-securitisation of the issue. The three crises have caused a security wake-up among governments at all levels and the public in general, and the article concludes by discussing whether this ‘perfect storm’ of crises will result in a farewell to neoliberalism – towards a neo-regulatory state facing further challenges and crises for governance, planning and the role of planners. The tentative prospect rather indicates a mixture of context-dependent ‘hybrid governance’, thus also underlining the crucial role of planners’ role as ‘chameleons’ in complicated governance processes of politics, policy and planning.

In the current transitional period in Central Europe two issues have been commonly regarded as outstanding: the democratization of national political systems and the transformation of national economies into capitalist ones. However, in the long run, the reintroduction of local self-government may be even more decisive when it comes to the stabilization of the post-socialist societies. Firstly arguing that local self-government is a crucial link between state and civil society, the paper goes on to review the local government system during socialism. This is followed by overviews of attempts to change this system in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. A number of hopes and fears associated with this development are highlighted, then the concluding section discusses the gains to be made for comparative political research by considering the local governments of Central Europe.

In this article a “sustainable urban development” programme in Sweden (Delegation for Sustainable Cities, 2008–2012) is analysed, with a particular focus on the social dimension, and in the light of a commonly held assumption of a general shift in politics over time “from government to governance”. However, on closer examination the programme comes out as something quite different. Taking “policy community” as our conceptual point of departure the article first portrays how post-war housing policy in Sweden was implemented jointly by a potent central government, strong local governments, public housing companies and major interest organisations. The Delegation for Sustainable Cities, on the other hand, was launched as “a national arena for sustainable urban development” with a multifaceted mission, including the production and dissemination of knowledge through best practice; the promotion of multi-actor dialogue and coordination; and the use and export of green technology. Implementation of the programme was delegated to a small number of projects in selected housing districts. In relation to the narrative “from government to governance”, the Delegation for  Sustainable Cities rather indicates the opposite, i.e. government steering by a combination of structural non-intervention, rhetorical flair and selective fragmentation into project-bound issue networks. The  sustainability discourse thus turned out to be a perfect umbrella for the fragmented implementation structure of the Delegation for Sustainable Cities programme. Instead of a tight, multi-level, national governance structure (policy community) we thus have a case of governing at some distance by a combination of what in recent literature have been labelled the Regulatory State and the Networked Polity.

One of the key agreements adopted at the Rio Conference in 1992 was the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Both in practice and research biodiversity has been mainly addressed in a non-urban context, often discussed in relation to issues such as the depletion of rainforests and desertification. However, as more than half of the world population are urban dwellers, it is increasingly urgent to discuss the application of the concept of biodiversity within an urban context. Issues approached in this article are: What does it mean to talk about biodiversity in an urban context? Is biodiversity a meaningful goal for urban politics and planning? Is there empirical evidence of implementing biodiversity in urban politics and planning. After an introduction, the article is organized into four sections. In the second section the concept of biological diversity is defined with special reference to its application in an urban context. Biodiversity and its relationship to urban governance is the topic of the third section, followed by a section analysing examples of how this relationship is practised in selected Swedish cities. The final section highlights five major conclusions with regard to the application of biodiversity in an urban context: (1) that all cities studied have adopted overall 'green' policies, including biodiversity as one component; (2) that local coalitions in favour of implementing biodiversity have been established between employees at different offices, between employees and politicians, and between employees and NGOs; (3) that there are in all cases tangible signs of spatial patterns and structures that are favourable to biodiversity; (4) that urban biodiversity, for its successful implementation, needs to be related, and accommodated to other values given priority in current policymaking, such as recreation; (5) that mainstream biodiversity analysis should be complemented by an urban landscape approach. Finally, the article returns to the more general question of what biodiversity could and should mean in urban planning.

Recent developments in Swedish local government and central-local government relations have been characterized by re-regulation and cut-back strategies on the one hand and decentralization and deregulation on the other. In this article these developments are analysed as a dynamic process with contradictory features. Swedish society is becoming more and more differentiated and specialized with fewer mechanisms of collective socialization, but with more economic and strategic calculations on the part of central and local authorities, interest organizations and individuals. New formal rules are developed in order to handle conflicts and enhance public sector legitimacy. In the communes we can identify an ideological shift from viewing the commune as a political institution to regarding it as a service-producing company. In addition, citizens are increasingly looked upon as individual consumers rather than political citizens. Corresponding organizational solutions such as depoliticization, privatization and freedom of choice have been developed. However, as a reaction to communal consumerism there is also a growing interest in communitarian values. There is an increasing number of examples of people participating in matters of common nature and expressing their belonging to a community. An interesting question for future research is whether the observed contradictory tendencies will increase or decrease the legitimacy of the traditional democratic institutions at the communal level.

Divergent conclusions have been drawn from research about whether or not local government in Sweden has become more independent of central government during the post-war expansion of the Swedish welfare state. By using a multi-dimensional resource perspective it is argued that local government could be viewed as potentially strong with regard to constitutional-legal, political, financial and professional resources. However, during the 1980s as several decentralist and deregulative programs were being implemented, central government strengthened its financial control over local government. An increasing interdependency between local government agencies and private institutions could also be observed. Thus, the current relations between central and local government in Sweden can be summarised in the formula: centralising (financial) power — decentralising responsibility.