Functionalist housing developments were constructed in Stockholm between 1930 and1980, a period marked by rapid urban growth and expansion. Despite the wide variety ofurban spaces produced over these five decades, functionalism is commonly associated withthe rationalist codification and stylistic evolution promoted by the Modern Movement. Inorder to address this internal diversity, this study understands functionalism not as a unifiedstyle but as a design philosophy or approach, expressed through a multiplicity of forms—as it was originally formulated in the 1920s and later revisited around 1950 by architectssuch as Ralph Erskine. The research draws on Adolf Behne’s seminal 1923 text, in whichfour functionalist approaches to design are identified: expressionism, rationalism, a middleground between the two, and utilitarianism. While styles are often organised as a successionof discrete historical periods, design approaches are here conceptualised as strands thatcut across and persist through those periods. Case studies of housing developments wereselected on the basis of established classifications of Stockholm’s urban development phasesand subsequently analysed in relation to contemporary European trends and comparableexperiences, identifying the driving forces that shaped their final form. The study alsoexamines the extent to which Behne’s functionalist approaches remained relevant throughoutthe period under consideration and how they manifested in the selected cases. Finally, eachhousing development is interpreted through the interaction of three key factors: the mode ofstylistic expression, the underlying design strand from which the project emerges, and thedriving forces that informed its realisation.

This chapter discusses the need to redefine how we read and understand cities in order to formulate the specific questions and goals that inform the design of the sustainable city. Looking to history as a continuum and to the city as an evolutionary process, Stockholm and Umeå were studied from the perspective of their connection to a common web of towns, which led to trace influences and processes that have shaped them and to identify four historical moments that explain key urban transformations. Particularly the 17th century, when both were rebuilt and re-signified as administrative nodes of the web of towns that the centralized and bureaucratic Swedish state imposed on top of a pre-existing network of trading settlements. It is argued that these two urban systems require different narratives about the dynamics that shape them, how they function, and how citizens relate to them; that there is a continuity in the way cities were approached between 17th and 20th centuries through a sequence of urban models rooted in ideas of improvement, capitalism, rationalism, and mechanism; and the importance of the internal generative processes of cities, enhanced by the exercise of citizenship, civic action, and proximity to civil institutions.