This paper analyses the alignment between urban planning targets and realized projects in Stockholm from 2012 to 2019. Employing both conformance and performance-based evaluation methods, it scrutinizes changes in street networks at both citywide and project -specific levels. The study entails a comprehensive review of planning documents, detailed configurational analyses, and an assessment of public transportation access. By examining the discrepancy between planning objectives and actual urban transformations, the research underscores the necessity for more effective monitoring techniques to achieve planning targets accurately. Notably, the analysis reveals that while municipal comprehensive plans (MCPs) articulate ambitious goals for urban development, the translation of these objectives into tangible changes in the built environment remains challenging. Despite the existence of regulatory frameworks and legal mandates, such as the MCPs and zoning plans, the paper identifies significant inconsistencies in target implementation across different projects. These disparities are attributed to various factors, including changes in political will, long timeframes and limited understanding of the complexity in the built environment. Furthermore, the research advocates for the integration of digital tools and methodologies to enhance monitoring and evaluation processes in urban planning. Overall, this study contributes to the ongoing discourse on urban development by providing valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities inherent in aligning planning targets with actual urban transformations, thereby offering recommendations for enhancing the efficacy of urban planning practices.

Addressing the locations of primary schools in the City of Stockholm, this paper investigates how present primary schools—and their schoolyards—are in the context of local neighbourhoods and the wider city. Building on a previous study of primary schools inUppsala (Legeby et al., 2019), the paper explores the location of Stockholm’s schools in terms of local and global integration cores, going on to examine the visual presence of 14 publicprimary schools, built between 1886 and 2018, in relation to their immediate contexts. Overlaying isovists (Benedikt, 1979), which are used to capture the visibility of the schoolyards from their surroundings (Vaughan, 2020), and axial lines, I calculate the ratio of depth of vision (isovists) to depth of orientation (axial lines), which gives a local exposure rate. This new measure refines our understanding of the presence and ‘urban embedding’ (Griffiths and Vaughan, 2020) of things in the city. While 12 of the schools in the sample are found to be located in the local integration core, the local exposure rate indicates a difference in the presence of their schoolyards, since they are represented in the entire rangeof the rate. By revealing the presence and visibility of schools in Stockholm, both at the city level and within their local neighbourhoods, the local exposure rate contributes to a discussion of how societal ideals of education and play are spatially materialised in the city.

Starting from experiences of social interaction and co-presence at two different schoolyards, this paper elaborates on if and how the space of the schoolyard relates to the interaction between parents. Schoolyards are everyday spaces, where parents are co-present regularly, potentially meeting over differences. This study aims to answer two questions about the spatial characteristics and configuration of the schoolyards through case studies of public compulsory schools in Stockholm. The questions are: Where do interactions occur? How do the schoolyard and school building spaces enable co-presence and social interaction between parents? To point to the complexity of the questions, three methods are combined to map the schoolyards. First, we analyse the local context and spatial configuration of a bigger sample, then we map characteristics at a selection of ten schoolyards. Finally, we look closer at the micro-scale of the yard through site visits and qualitative observations at four of the schools. The sample selection is based on four criteria; one is the possible diversity of persons belonging to a variety of income groups at the school. The findings show that there is a co-presence and some interaction between parents in schoolyards and the hypothesis is that the size of the yard, the number of co-present persons, and available waiting niches further interaction. Implications of this ongoing research can approach the importance of the built environment of schoolyards as one part of building a community.