Following the argument that increasing mobility has scattered consumption throughout Sweden’s regions, this study investigates how individuals’ consumption choices are influenced by official heritage. It argues that individuals’ everyday routines highlight the role played by heritage in socio-economic regional change, challenging traditional planning systems and altering individuals’ relationships with their environments, leading to new values being placed on official heritage. This argument was tested using interviews and questionnaires in Mariefred, Sweden, and demonstrates that official heritage plays multiple and contrasting roles, including the use of heritage as an attempt to reconcile opposing principles such as progress/development and tradition/conservation. 

This study examines how the past is used in the construction of regional identity narratives in policy discourses and documents. Despite assumptions that regional identity is based on shared culture, some authors argue that new forms of regional identity have emerged as the consequence of regions’ involvement in wider networks. Identity has been pursued as an asset to regional attractiveness and economic growth and, as such, is shaped by regional development strategies concerning particular social groups. Socially shared representations of the past through history, cultural heritage and collective memory play an important role in this process since the past is a powerful resource that may be used to construct images of places, legitimizing claims on territories. Document analysis and interviews with planners are used to analyse strategies for regional development in five counties located in the Mälardalen Region, Sweden. This study shows that regional strategies are guided by identity narratives framing regions from an exclusive outside perspective, leaving internal qualities unnoticed. The past is used to structure these narratives and construct identities that serve economic growth rather than the integration of the plural heritages of the region.

Following the argument that the sustainability challenges that emerge from the production and use of ICT are complex to evaluate due to the high pace of ICT development, the rapid dissemination of new ICT infrastructure and devices and their unpredictable effects on socio-economic structures, this study shows that there are alternatives to contemporary forecasted futures and exemplifies that ICT can be used to facilitate different societal developments. It is argued that creating parallel possible futures (plural) aids in the process of identifying potential benefits and drawbacks of technological development and situate current decisions in a longer time frame. The process of designing five images of the future of Sweden in 2060 is, then, presented and some of the advantages of using these images for different purposes are discussed. Among the concluding reflections it is highlighted that exploring benefits and drawbacks of different possible futures can empower actors that at the present play a role in shaping and implementing ICT strategies and policies and also actors from other sectors getting to see the opportunities and risks with ICT.

This study explores the performance of the education and health sectors in relation to five ICT futures for Sweden in 2060. The accessibility, affordability, quality and efficiency of these sectors influence the creation and maintenance of essential collective values such as democracy and justice; consequently both education and health are fundamental to a sustainable society. Exploring the performance of these sectors in different futures enables the identification of barriers and undesirable developments, and encourages a debate on how ICT can be used to reinforce inclusive, and counteract unwanted, futures.