Digitization, often performed under the heading of becoming “smart,” has been acknowledged as an approach to transform the public sector in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. But what are the specific ideals for future urban government in cities aiming to boost digitization of the public sector? This paper reports the results of an exploration of the smart city initiative in Stockholm. Using utopianism as a lens, the paper reveals the ageing population as a crucial driver of the smart city agenda. Data from interviews, document analyses and observations demonstrate the overall ambition to reduce public sector workload by digitizing and automating tasks, thereby cutting public resource use. This corresponds to findings within the broader digital government scholarship. However, the analysis also shows that becoming smart might create new, complex tasks for the public sector. The paper discusses how these developments might encourage widespread privatization of services currently performed by the public sector. Applying a utopian perspective allows for debate on the ambitions for future improvements embedded in smart city initiatives. Ultimately, such a lens can be applied to a vast range of urban issues, opening avenues for speculative insights into how future cities are envisioned.

The need for a sustainable transformation of the transport system has been known for decades, but it has proven challenging to translate insights and policy goals into action. One of the explanations is that prevailing conventional and techno-rationalist approaches in transport planning do not help to answer the inherently political and uncertain question of what a sustainable system for mobility and access might look like. This chapter aims to provide perspectives on ways forward for developing transport planning into an arena where transformation-orientated ideas, i.e., ideas related to sweeping change and the consideration of other possible mobility futures, can be accommodated and explored. In the chapter, which builds on empirical material from Swedish transport planning at the national level, the concepts of the political and strife are used to discuss the critical role of planners to navigate wicked planning situations and work productively with conflicts in strategic planning situations.

While the technological development of vehicles and fuels is not adequate to meet current climate mitigation targets, infrastructure development also plays an important role in transforming the transport system. Previous studies have argued that conventional infrastructure planning is incapable of implementing climate mitigation. The aim of the paper is to provide insights into power means and mechanisms that counteract integration of climate mitigation targets in infrastructure planning. This is done by an in-depth case study of current Swedish national transport planning. This case provides a rich illustration of a situation with high political ambitions regarding climate mitigation on the one hand, and power mechanisms and resistance with regard to climate goals during the planning process on the other. The case is analysed using the perspective of power circuits and shows how forecasting works as an obligatory passage point, sorting in and out which analyses will be part of the decision-making material. Analyses which do not fit the forecasting model are dismissed from planning. The conclusion is that as long as the transport infrastructure planning practice is dependent on forecasting as the only central analysis there will be difficulties in changing the scope of infrastructure planning and making climate goals central for transport planning.

Discursive power dynamics are explored that shape dominant meanings and understandings related to climate mitigation in national transport policy and planning. The research is carried out as a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis of policy and planning documents from national transport planning in Sweden, focusing on the recent and ongoing rounds of national transport planning. The meanings, problem definitions and suggestions about possible and reasonable ways forward for climate mitigation are examined within the documentation, with specific attention given to the framing of strategic choices and priorities for the future. Five dominant themes are identified on climate mitigation that permeate the documents from national transport policy and planning. Altogether, the discursive framings and meaning making has led to a situation where deep political issues and strategic choices are being avoided and not dealt with explicitly. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion on the need for a changed practice of transport politics and planning.

This paper aims to deepen the insights into specific policy and planning prerequisites that affect how bicycle logistics services can be initiated and established in urban environments. Empirical data consist of policy documents and qualitative interviews with bicycle logistics entrepreneurs and local policy actors from four Swedish municipalities which are all known for their ambitious strategies for sustainable transport. The paper leads to insights into a variety of challenges facing the introduction of bicycle logistics in urban environments but points also to possibilities and key issues for the further development of these types of concepts. Among these are the importance of targeted initiatives and support for new concepts for sustainable urban freight, but also conscious strategies for infrastructure development and a more well-informed use of public procurement processes. In addition, the study confirms the importance of norms, attitudes and knowledge among policy makers, planners and potential customers about bicycle logistics and its potential for urban areas.

This article presents findings from a qualitative in-depth analysis of a four-year Swedish national policy initiative where six public agencies were commissioned to produce a strategic plan for a transition towards a fossil-free transport sector. The aim of the article is to provide empirically grounded insights on principles and practices of importance for building transformative capacity in strategic, long-term transport planning. In the analysis, the concepts stewarding, unlocking, transforming and orchestrating are applied to explore and discuss transformative features of the policy initiative. Altogether, several elements of transformative capacity were developed through the process. Of specific importance was the establishment of an open and explorative approach to carrying out the commission, and ways in which the organizations involved started to challenge dominant perspectives and analytical practices in conventional transport planning. Shared principles and practices for analysis and assessment were developed, which allowed for a broadened consideration of climate mitigation measures. However, due to a lack of coordination with formalized planning settings and a lack of political decisions to sustain the commission, there are yet no signs of the work influencing conventional transport planning. Even so, gained experience and insights from this case can inform future change-oriented initiatives. 

Sustainability discourse offers a plethora of perspectives on the type of change needed to ensure a just development within planetary boundaries, and how that change could come about. Calls for radical transformations nonetheless underline the need to examine prevalent discursive structures in society, including challenging the 'ideology of growth', in order to formulate new and transformative policy approaches. Based on empirical insights as to how different actors - including grassroots, planners, officials and politicians - in Sweden perceive the transformations needed to reach sustainability goals, this paper explores how narratives of change reproduce, make use of or show cracks in the eco-modern sustainability paradigm.

Based on an understanding of automation as various technological and organisational configurations in the making, this article aims to deepen insights into the governance arrangements shaping how automation is being introduced in public transport. Using a qualitative case study, we analyse the introduction of automated shuttle buses in Barkarbystaden, in the north-west of the Stockholm region, Sweden. Participant observation and qualitative interviews have been used to explore the governance arrangement forming automation in this case. We use planning literature on 'soft spaces' to discuss how automation emerges in connection to established processes and actors. Our findings show how the governance arrangement in this case transferred existing roles and responsibilities to the collaboration involving driverless shuttles, something which gives the bus operator a new and influential role in smart mobility in public transport. The article concludes with a discussion about the need to think critically about the ways in which roles, relations and responsibilities may be shaped and reshaped in collaborative governance arrangements around smart mobility, and to develop a more clearly articulated policy and planning agenda which clarifies the long-term public vision for automation in infrastructure and transport planning.

Sustainability discourse offers a plethora of perspectives on the type of change needed to ensure a just development within planetary boundaries, and how that change could come about. Calls for radical transformations nonetheless underline the need for examining prevalent discursive structures in society, including challenging the ‘ideology of growth’, in order to formulate new and transformative policy approaches. Based in empirical insights on how different actors – including grassroots, planners, officials and politicians – in Sweden perceive the transformations needed to reach sustainability goals, this paper explores how narratives of change reproduce, make use of or offer cracks in the eco-modern sustainability paradigm.

This study explores the local municipality as an important arena for developing and implementing initiatives for a transition to long-term sustainable development. It focuses on institutional conditions that support the integration of ‘radical’, transition-oriented perspectives and ideas (i.e. perspectives stressing the need for changed social power relations and ‘other’ norms and visions for the future,) in local governance, with a specific focus on small municipalities. Inspired by transition literature and theory on institutional capacity, the paper explores frames of reference, relational resources, and mobilisation capacity. Empirically, the paper builds on research in two small municipalities in Sweden, where we studied documents on policy for local development, and energy and land-use planning, and carried out qualitative interviews with politicians, planners, and actors from local industry and civil society. The study provides a rich empirical illustration of specific conditions that affect the possibilities to work with transition-oriented perspectives in small municipalities.