This paper analyses the distribution of social infrastructure (accessibility to services and job opportunities) in a perspective of spatial lifestyle stratification in the Stockholm region. The study is based on a questionnaire completed by 1160 respondents, capturing individual data on attitudes, lifestyles and demography, and urban morphological qualities developed from high resolution register data. The spatial social stratification is based on a spatial cluster analysis on six lifestyles: highly success-oriented; success-oriented with high work ethics; conscious young and elder; people with weak motivations; designers; and middle-class bourgeois. They are spatially distributed in eight overlapping spatial clusters, namely: highly success-oriented and socially mixed central inner city; designers' inner suburbia; socially mixed inner suburbia; middle-class bourgeois suburbia; highly success-oriented suburbia; conscious young-elder suburbia; socially mixed exurbia; and socially mixed rurality. It turns out that people characterized by weak motivation lifestyle (low income, low education level, not success oriented, etc.) are the most negatively affected lifestyle cluster concerning accessibility to jobs and service. A total of 45% of the 'weak motivation lifestyle' respondents reside in 'socially mixed exurbia' and 'socially mixed rurality'. They experience less than 20% of social infrastructure compared to, in this respect, the most privileged spatial lifestyle cluster, the 'highly success-oriented and socially mixed central inner city' cluster. Still, surprisingly, this 'weak motivation' lifestyle is also concentrated in the 'socially mixed inner suburbia' cluster. One reason for this dual spatial concentration might be the Swedish rental policy, linked to residential use-values and a queuing system, instead of exchange values. This policy allows for a complex spatial social stratification influenced by a range of factors (lifestyle and attitudes among others), and not merely income.

The possibility of attaining environmental and social goals through urban and regional planning has long been the subject of research and debate. The current research investigates the precise relations between urban morphology, lifestyles, social-psychological aspects and work-related travel behaviour in terms of travel distance and travel mode. The study area is the Stockholm region. Travel distance and mode were linked to explanatory variables by linear and multinomial regression methods. Results from this study in the form of marginal effects show that urban morphology and demographics have a substantial influence on travel behaviour. However, lifestyles, attitudes and ideologies have significant influence as well. Travel distance is foremost influenced by attitude to travel distance and occupation. Travel mode is foremost influenced by distance to public transport facility and gender. Urban morphology, a designer lifestyle and ideological concerns regarding ecology matter as well. Thus, sustainable travel behaviours can be promoted by spatial planning. As other factors – attitudes, lifestyles and ideologies – also have a substantial influence, the possibilities and limitations of planning to contribute to a sustainable society should be further debated and if possible – clarified.

The sorting of high-ability workers is often advanced as one source of spatial disparities in economic outcomes. There are still few papers that analyze when human capital sorting occurs and whom it involves. Using data on 16 cohorts of university graduates in Sweden, we demonstrate significant sorting to urban regions on high school grades and education levels of parents, i.e., two attributes typically associated with latent abilities that are valued in the labor market. A large part of this sorting has already occurred in deciding where to study, because the top universities in Sweden are predominantly located in urban regions. The largest part of directed sorting on ability indicators occurs in the decision of where to study. Even after controlling for sorting prior to labor market entry, the best and brightest are still more likely to start working in urban regions. However, this effect appears to be driven by Sweden's main metropolitan region, Stockholm. We find no influence of our ability indicators on the probability of starting to work in urban regions after graduation when Stockholm is excluded. Studies of human capital sorting need to account for selection processes to and from universities, because neglecting mobility prior to labor market entry is likely to lead to an underestimation of the extent of the sorting to urban regions.

One of the main problems in developing countries is unplanned urban growth and land use change. Timely identification of new constructions can be a good solution to mitigate some environmental and social problems. This study examined the possibility of identifying new constructions in urban areas using images from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), Google Earth and Sentinel-2. The accuracy of the land cover map obtained using these images was investigated using pixel-based processing methods (maximum likelihood, minimum distance, Mahalanobis, spectral angle mapping (SAM)) and object-based methods (Bayes, support vector machine (SVM), K-nearest-neighbor (KNN), decision tree, random forest). The use of DSM to increase the accuracy of classification of UAV images and the use of NDVI to identify vegetation in Sentinel-2 images were also investigated. The object-based KNN method was found to have the greatest accuracy in classifying UAV images (kappa coefficient = 0.93), and the use of DSM increased the classification accuracy by 4%. Evaluations of the accuracy of Google Earth images showed that KNN was also the best method for preparing a land cover map using these images (kappa coefficient = 0.83). The KNN and SVM methods showed the highest accuracy in preparing land cover maps using Sentinel-2 images (kappa coefficient = 0.87 and 0.85, respectively). The accuracy of classification was not increased when using NDVI due to the small percentage of vegetation cover in the study area. On examining the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods, a novel method for identifying new rural constructions was devised. This method uses only one UAV imaging per year to determine the exact position of urban areas with no constructions and then examines spectral changes in related Sentinel-2 pixels that might indicate new constructions in these areas. On-site observations confirmed the accuracy of this method.

In this study we explore species richness and traits across two urban gradients in the City of Cape Town. The first is the natural-urban boundary and the second is a socio-economic gradient informed by historical race-based apartheid planning. Plant species and cover were recorded in 156 plots sampled from conservation areas, private gardens, and public open green space. The socio-economic gradient transitioned from wealthier, predominantly white neighbourhoods to poorer, pre- dominantly black neighbourhoods. The socio-economic gradient was selected to fall within one original vegetation type to ensure a consistent biophysical template. There is a marked shift between the natural and urban plant communities in the City of Cape Town, with little structural affinity. Urban landscapes are dominated by grass, with low diversity compared to natural counterparts. A significant ecological gradient of reduced biodiversity, traits, and in turn functionality, was found across the socio-economic gradient. Wealthier communities benefit from more private green space, more public green space, and a greater plant diversity. Poorer communities have limited green space on all fronts, and lower plant and trait diversity. Plant communities with limited diversity are less resilient and if exposed to environmental perturbation would lose species, and associated ecosystem services faster than a species rich community. These species-poor plant communities mirror historical apartheid planning that is resistant to change. Based on how biodiversity, functionality, and associated ecosystem services and ecosystem stability are linked, the results of this study suggests how significant environmental injustice persists in the City of Cape Town.

This article discusses the historical mechanisms and geographical factors that have formed the current structure of urban water provision in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The formation of the urban geography of Kampala dates back to the early colonial period. The high- and middle-income earners have settled on the hills while the poorest part of the population lives in the low-lying areas, dispersed as pockets of unplanned and informal settlements. Public services are underdeveloped in these informal pockets. The government has pledged to improve services for the poor and this article analyses whether the efforts made are likely to lead to a lasting change, seen in a longer time perspective. The public water supply in Kampala has ever since its opening in 1930 focused on the middle- and high-income groups while poor people have been marginalised. Water provision to low-income groups has continued to rely on standpipes since the colonial period. There has also been organisational continuity, with a single centralised organisation in charge of urban water supply in all larger towns. Institutional changes, such as the new connection policy from 2004, have perpetuated the emphasis on middle- and high-income groups. This article argues that the traditional focus on private connections is creating a barrier for expansion of services in informal areas. Pre-paid water distribution, which was tried already in the 1920s, has in recent years seen a revival. This technology offers an important avenue for rectifying inequalities of public services that has been reproduced since the colonial period.

This paper deals with the narratives about environmental struggles over garbage facilities in Campania, Italy, a region which, in the last decades, has become the worldwide icon of the failure in the management of its own metabolism. In particular I analyze the narratives about the activists involved in the struggles and their creative interaction with scientific knowledge. My thesis is that ecological conflicts--at least in this specific case--have been producers of communities and knowledges. Instead of reinforcing the narrative about “natural” communities living in a space of radically otherness and oppressed by global villains, I would like to explore the interstitial South, mixed with the North and its science and contradictions. Using a collection of interviews and some grassroots documentaries about the crisis and the mobilization, I analyze the rising of a collective knowledge and the making of communities through the very experience of resistance to the governmentality plan of waste disposal.

This thesis investigates whether higher urban densities and redevelopment projects contribute to more sustainable cities and communities, focusing specifically on Oslo. Recent decades have seen Oslo's strategic push towards densification in central-eastern post-industrial areas, such as Grünerløkka, Tøyen, and Hovinbyen. While this has led to revitalisation, it has also resulted in gentrification and the displacement of long-standing residents. This research highlights the complex interplay between the benefits of urban revitalisation and the negative socio-economic consequences, particularly regarding housing affordability and social equity. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study integrates qualitative and quantitative methods to provide a comprehensive analysis of the socioeconomic effects and housing dynamics within the context of urban densification. The research is structured along four lines of inquiry: a literature review of the advantages and disadvantages of urban densification, an examination of socio-economic segregation within Oslo, an exploration of Oslo’s densification and housing policies, and a detailed case study of the neighbourhoods that were targeted for densification and redevelopment. By comparing empirical data with planning practices, the study identifies discrepancies between Oslo's goals of sustainable development and the negative socioeconomic outcomes, particularly in rapidly transforming areas of the city. Moreover, the findings illustrate how Oslo’s market-driven housing system often prioritises investment returns over social inclusivity, underestimating the adverse social impacts of higher density, particularly in relation to affordable housing and social inclusion. This thesis underscores the importance of inclusive planning practices that address the marginalisation of lower-income residents and foster a more cohesive and equitable urban environment, ensuring that all residents can benefit from improvements to an area without being economically displaced.

The region of Morges (Switzerland) grows in a context of land shortage. Industrial zones become strategic areas for denser settlements, threatening the local economic development in the long term. This master thesis investigates the conditions in which industrial zones in the region of Morges can be integrated in a function mixed urban area without jeopardising local activities. Case studies from Bern, The Hague, Geneva and Brussels are used as “best practices” in order to perform the analysis. Results show that the monitoring of disturbances and of logistics as well as a strong public commitment are key factors to a successful reconversion of industrial zones towards functional mix. “Best practices” are efficient if used as a support to decision making and as a source of inspiration.

This paper examines the link between offshoring and technical change measured by patent and total factor productivity in order to sort out the causality. It applies instrumental variable and matching approaches on a panel of more than 7000 Swedish manufacturing firms over the period 2001–2014, and identify offshoring-related intermediate imports by the United Nations Broad Economic Categories system. Accounting for self-selection and reverse causality, no impact of offshoring on TFP is found and only weak effect on patenting.

This article traces the flow of municipal solid waste from southern Italy through a waste‐to‐energy facility and district heating system in Austria, examining the roles that waste's transformation from contaminant to commodity to fuel plays in interconnected, distributed, and contested urbanization processes. It contends that, while metabolic circulation hides socioecological costs in one place to facilitate valorization in another, specific spatial configurations emerge through territorialization—of waste economies, in this case—providing the spatial base to realize metabolic flows and to anchor political narratives. A decisive effect is that certain patterns of urbanization become locked‐in, impeding alternative metabolic transitions and spatial configurations. Attending to the coproduction of three sites—Naples, Italy; Zwentendorf, Austria; and St Pölten, Austria—through the circulation and transformation of waste and energy the article provides an empirical multi‐sited case study of a political ecology of urbanization.

Urban gardening is a burgeoning practice that increasingly takes place in urban centres of the world. In this thesis, I define urban gardens as socially mediated yet materially rooted phenomenon through which social and material relations are elaborated in common through time and space. And, I understand the garden not as an object, but as an entity that emerges out of the relationships between gardeners and non-human nature. I draw on the recent turn in commons’ theory shifting the focus on commoning, and not, as in earlier commons research, on the commons as structure. Grounded in the case of a new wave of urban gardening initiatives in the City of Stockholm, Sweden, I examine how commoning urban gardens transforms the people doing the gardening, the commoners, including their agency, subjectivity, and identity. But also how the commoners shape their structural environment.

Ontologically, I deploy a critical realist social theory perspective which means that I acknowledge the a priori existence of structures and agency and their conditioning by each other relationally. This means that I (i) look at how spatial, societal and temporal structures affect the agency of gardeners (ii) how those gardeners are affecting their structural environment through the practice of urban gardening, as (iii) well as how their agency is conditioned by the practice.

I deploy a qualitative mixed methods approach, comprising of interviews, a questionnaire, observations, participatory dissemination and poetic inquiry and find that high green public space availability in the City of Stockholm, municipal policies in favour of urban gardening, and a rich historic culture of associational life in Sweden provide a supportive context for urban gardening. I find that commoning gardens in public spaces bring together people and build collective relations despite a context of neoliberal individualisation. It emancipates individuals by reorganising the management of urban space, and changes how the City of Stockholm is urbanising towards more collective organising. Among those that partake in urban gardening, some remain grounded in a need-fulfilment (“I want to garden to be more in nature”), whereas others change through the commitment of being part of an urban garden, become political and collective subjectivities with a social identity that overlaps with their personal identity. This shows that structures condition people differently, and do not deterministically affect agency in the same way for everyone. Yet many remain entirely excluded from the new urban garden commons, such as people of colour, indicating that urban gardening, while it can be transformative for those that partake, is reproductive of structures of whiteness in urban public space. At the same time, historical structures of patriarchy in public spaces are being transformed. At the expense of the unpaid social reproductive labour of female gardeners, who make out the majority of urban gardeners, public green space is being transformed into spaces of care and community.

I conclude that urban gardening deserves a critical analysis of its immanent contradictions to safeguard against unwanted and unintentional reproduction of injustices and for the promotion of practices that emancipate and empower people.

In the City of Stockholm, for more than a decade, engaged women transform public green spaces collectively into commoned urban gardens, based on affective relations and care. Drawing on Sylvia Federici’s work on the role of oppression and marginalisation of female subjects and the destruction of the commons, I discuss, in this paper, how collective forms of urban gardening condition current processes of urbanisation, and, how patriarchal capitalist urbanisation conditions urban gardening as collective practice of social reproduction. Based on the case of a greening city that draws on the free labour of women, and by making use of the feminist method of poetic inquiry, I contribute to the debate on the gendered and spatial forms of urbanisation through a dialectical analysis of the relation between public forms of social reproduction and urbanisation. I argue that urban gardening can be understood as a ‘reproductive fix’ of capitalist urbanisation that continues to exploit subjects of social reproduction – in an invisible manner. 

While there is evidence that commons have the potential to counteract socio-spatial injustices unleashed by neoliberal and capitalist forms of urbanisation, less is known about how commons lead to emancipatory change. Anchored in dialectical social theory, this article explains commoning as a mechanism through which people reproduce/transform their structural context and agency, arguing that the potential for emancipation through commoning lies in the commoners’ ability to induce processes of structural/agential transformation. Empirically grounded in interviews with urban community gardeners in the City of Stockholm, Sweden, we show that collective gardening conceptualised as practice of commoning contributes to structural change in that female volunteer labour collectivises the mandate over municipally managed public space, transforming socio-spatial relations. Yet, garden commoning proves to reproduce structural whiteness and middle-class agency in public space, fails to establish autonomy from waged-labour relations, and is unable to abolish the separation from the sources of reproduction and subsistence.

Guidebooks are a part of a branch that is driven by market decisions as well as more unpredictable mental and cultural constructs. One of them is a geography of tourism, to which the guidebooks contribute by affecting both choices of routes and destinations, but also by mediating many types of spatial configurations with relevance for this imagined geography and the decisions it leads to. To describe and understand better how guidebooks work regarding these processes is, as this article could give the impression of, not solely a historical task, since these kinds of books in rather traditional formats and types still fill up substantial parts of the shelves in the bookstores of today.

From 1880 to 1964, many expeditions crossed seas and borders and climbed the highest mountains of the world, generating spaces which varied in accordance with the purpose of the journey and the interests of the explorers. This vast array of spatial re-productions is the realm of geography. Building upon the etymology of geo- and graphein (earth writing), this contribution analyses landscapes as products of geography by adopting emerging approaches in the environmental humanities (EH). Combining environment and humanities entails a mutual transformation: on the one hand, we recognise a landscape as constituted by stories other than materiality; on the other hand, the text - the object of interest par excellence in the humanities - involves a corporeal subject, not only a written or oral entity. If we deem the geography of a place the material translation of practices, discourses, and representations, EH offers the interpretative space and analytical tools to read (and re-write) the complex text of landscape. Given that power relations shape cultural and historical aspects of representations, which is to say geography, reassessments of geographical texts through EH can take on the status of a decolonising practice. 

Most telecommuting (TC) studies focus on travel impacts and do not consider changes in time spent on non-travel activities (e.g. 'leisure') and the energy impacts of these changes. We demonstrate a time-use approach to assess interrelations between changes in commuting time and time spent on travel and non-travel activities and associated energy impacts. Time-use data analysis shows that spending less time on commuting is associated with more time spent on 'sleep', 'leisure', 'personal, household and family care', 'private travel' and 'eating and drinking'. Substituting car commuting with 'sleep', 'eating and drinking', common 'leisure' and 'personal, household and family care' activities is likely to reduce energy requirements as these are associated with less energy requirements than car commuting. This is different for 'private travel', 'meal preparation at home', and energy-intensive or out-of-home 'leisure' activities, which are associated with relatively high energy requirements. The commute modal split is a key variable in energy impacts of TC, because transport modes differ in their energy requirements. While car commuters can realize high energy savings through TC, for people who usually bike or walk to work, direct energy savings through reduced commuting are zero. Thus, any additional energy impact due to substitute activities, increases net direct energy requirements. Future research should further investigate the relationship between TC and time spent on (non-)travel activities and the marginal energy requirements of these activities. If so, the time-use approach can become key for assessing energy impacts of TC and other applications which impact individual time allocation.

This part-report/chapter is part of a research report that presents findings from a research project on universal design from a systems perspective. This perspective includes “systems” in several aspects: planning systems, political systems, organizations, social systems, and spatial systems. The focus is on planning systems and spatial systems, addressing challenges and queries in how to understand molar (larger scale, system) perspectives of universal design as interlinked with molecular (local) aspects. The reoport contains a general discussion and conclusion of the project as a whole and three studies, focusing on process and governance, developing models and methods, and investigating universal design challenges in relation to system world, life world, and material world respectively.

This part-report/chapter concerns process and governance, and is in Swedish. See the whole volume for a brief English summary of the entire collection. 

Stadsbyggnad och samhällsplanering är som framgår av förordet inget neutralt område utan en praktik och ett kunskapsområde med stora implikationer för människors vardagsliv liksom för samhället i stort. Det handlar om att få platser att fungera bra för dem som bor, arbetar eller på annat sätt är involverade i platsen, och där i samman­hanget ’fungera’ avser hela skalan från individens möjligheter till självförverkligande, till det för staden och samhället gemensamma bästa.

Över tid förändrar sig förutsättningarna och platser som en gång formgivits i samklang med sin tid behöver i stadsbyggnadens och samhällsplaneringens praktik omtolkas och ges nya innebörder för att kunna leva upp till den nya tidens krav, utan att för den skull ge avkall på grundläggande överenskommelser i samhällskontraktet. Platser i praktiken kommer då att handla om social hållbarhet och om vilken typ av stad vi vill ha i vilken typ av samhälle. En komponent i detta handlar om livskraften i det lokala offentliga rummet och de villkor som gäller där oavsett om detta är beläget i stadens centrum eller i något av stadens ytterområden, där mycket av stadens liv levs. Det är detta lokala offentliga rum som den här rapporten ämnar bidra till att belysa.

Swedish cities are becoming increasingly multicultural and diverse in terms of lifestylesand socioeconomic conditions. However, cultural and social diversity is seldomconsidered when planning for sustainable urban development. This paper examinesplanning for more eco-friendly living in the increasingly diverse population of a citydistrict of Stockholm. The study reveals the prevalence of a discourse in which aSwedish identity carries environmental responsibility in the form of tidiness, recyclingand familiarity with nature. It is argued that planning for urban sustainability isunderpinned by Swedish middle-class norms, indirectly entailing processes of (self-)disciplining and transforming the other (foreign and/or troublesome dwellers) intowell-behaving Swedes. A clearer definition of the environmental improvementintended, its goals and target groups is needed. Finally, an appreciation of the multipleways we can save natural resources would make urban planning policies more attunedto social and cultural diversity as well as more environmentally progressive.

Den här rapporten baseras på en klimat- och sårbarhetsanalys som identifierar de hälsoeffekter som uppkommer i och med ett förändrat klimat. Analysen pekar ut flera samhällsystem som kommer att påverkas av klimatförändringarna men som kan anpassas med hjälp av samhällsplaneringen. Utifrån klimat- och sårbarhetsanalysen har parametern dricksvatten undersökts närmare då tillgången till rent dricksvatten är grundläggande för allt mänskligt liv.

Botkyrka kommun tar idag sitt dricksvatten från Mälaren. Forskning visar dock att Mälarens vattenkvalitet hotas av klimatförändringarna. Den pågående havsnivåhöjningen kommer i slutet av seklet leda till en ökad risk för större inbrott av saltvatten i Mälaren. Brunifieringen, en ökad halt av näringsämnen och humus i råvattnet, är ytterligare ett hot mot dricksvattenkvaliteten och kommer att öka i och med större nederbördsmängder i framtiden.

Botkyrka har genom sina stora isälvsavlagringar bra naturliga förutsättningar för att producera grundvatten av god kvalitet, vilket är vatten som kan användas för dricksvatten, både idag och i framtiden. De stora isälvsavlagringarna bidrar också till goda förutsättningar f̈ör att framställa ballastmaterial till bygg- och anläggningsindustrin. Det innebär en målkonflikt mellan dessa olika prioriteringar, vilken har blivit synliggjord under senare år i och med den ökade kunskapen kring behovet att säkerställa en robust, kvalitetssäkrad och långsiktig lösning för kommunens och regionens dricksvattenförsörjning.

Idag pågår grustäktsverksamhet på flera platser i kommunen, vilket innebär en negativ risk för vattenresursens funktion som dricksvatten. Vid grustäktsverksamhet forslas många lager grus bort, vilka fyller en funktion vid naturlig rening av grundvattnet. I och med det ökar riskerna för att vattnets naturliga rening kommer att påverkas negativt. En ökad risk finns även för föroreningar från verksamheten i sig, där fordon på grustäktsområdet kan leda till spill av olja och andra kemikalier.

Kommunen arbetar för att grustäktsverksamheten ska avvecklas. I samrådsförslaget till den nya översiktsplanen har kommunen istället förslag på att exploatera dessa områden. Det kan innebära andra risker, som kan ha negativ påverkan på grundvattenkvaliteten, om dessa områden exploateras. Kommunen behöver därför se över de exploateringsförslag som finns på grustäktsområden.

Kommunen behöver upprätta en vattenförsörjningsplan för att kunna säkerställa en robust, kvalitetssäkrad och långsiktig lösning för kommunens och regionens dricksvattenförsörjning. Med en sådan plan kan prioriterade vattenområden, för framtida dricksvattenförsörjning, identifieras och skyddas. 

This study examines the concept of sustainable lifestyles. It is concluded that the concept of sustainable lifestyles is derived from the bigger term sustainable development and that the concept sustainable lifestyles exists as an antipode to unsustainable lifestyles. Sustainable lifestyles are still a new concept within the academic field of urban planning and design and some confusion regarding the definition remains.

Three case studies were made investigating urban planning for sustainable lifestyles. The sites were Houthaven in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Royal Seaport in Stockholm Sweden and Western Harbour in Malmö, Sweden. Urban planning for sustainable lifestyles was explicitly carried out in the Royal Seaport, in the other two cases the concept of sustainability was approached more generally but nonetheless the methods used were quite similar in all three cases.

How people in the society of today are seen as responsible for e.g. buying ecological food, driving ecological vehicles and living a sustainable lifestyle, are analysed through the approaches of governmentality and biopower. There has been a shift from a centralised governing of sustainability implementations to a decentralised one where the individual responsibility stands in focus.

There are different views of what a sustainable behaviour and lifestyle could incorporate. According to the technocentric approach, technical solutions to environmental problems are sufficient, but according to the ecocentric approach, behavioural changes are needed in order to obtain sustainability. This has implications for the planning of sustainable lifestyles. In some cases technical solutions are favoured in front of behavioural ones and the other way around. The two tracks of understanding leads to two different pathways of sustainability and a need to recognize and comprehend the differences are crucial in planning for sustainable lifestyles.

Sustainable behaviour and habits relate to actions, which e.g. minimizes the use of natural resources or incorporates the switch from an unsustainable habit to a sustainable one. Sustainable behaviour is often referred to as pro-environmental behaviour and circles around consumption. There are several ways of replacing unsustainable habits with sustainable ones discussed in this study.

The objective of this licentiate thesis is to explore the relationship between urban justice and urban design, studied through the three lenses of urban imageries, urban development agency, and strategies for just urban design within the context of Stockholm. The concept of urban justice has been critically explored through engagement with academic literature, document analysis, interviews, and site visits to two case studies:  Årstafältet and Levande Stockholm.

Stockholm is spatially and socially divided. Injustices, alienation and inequality are evident within political, economic, and social structures, often manifested in, and debated through, the spatial dimension. Although urban justice is inherently a multiple and complex notion, urban planning tends to simplify and these intricate issues, reducing them to plain and shallow challenges that appear easy to resolve through urban design.

Urban design practices have often been focused on bridging physical gaps that arise in relation to injustices and inequalities. These urban design traditions based on geometric models, such as space syntax, emphasizes spatial configurations and geometric relations. Further they tend to conceptualize the city through a two-dimensional framework. In applied urban design, e.g., as in the Årstafältet project, these limited interpretations risk uncritically attributing causal importance to urban design, where strategies like "flow” and “encounters" are highlighted as applicable tools for reducing segregation.

Moreover, this thesis shows that the urban design strategies used in Stockholm, at Årstafältet, and through Levande Stockholm, rely on an accessible form of urban design focused on generic solutions (urban design recipes) and traditional urban design ideals. These strategies are common within the tradition of new urbanism. This promotes an approach to urban design that undermines its potential by assuming that goals like "attractiveness" and a "livable city" can be achieved through generic urban design solutions, such as "flowers and benches."

 Urban development seems to be trapped in a binary approach to urbanity supported by urban design that follows geometric models and urban design recipes. Collectively, these uncritical urban development strategies risk contributing to greater inequality and injustice within the city. This dissertation finds that both geometric and recipe urban design strategies favour a simplified urban layout, which undermines the broader potential of urban design practices. 

The location and manner in which urban development takes place are of great importance. Urban development is crucial for urban justice, though perhaps not in the way it is often framed in current theory and practice. Urban design is as a form of urban agency, not because of its direct ability to break segregation or create attractive cities, but due to its structural and multiple capacities to transform the urban landscape. This dissertation thus encourages urban design to continuously make visible the diverse and situated nature of cities. An urban design approach with a clear structural perspective and a critical stance on urban design holds significant potential to enhance urban justice.

At the root of energy policy are fundamental questions about the sort of social and environmental futures in which people want to live and how decisions over different energy pathways and energy futures are made. The interdisciplinary field of political ecology has the capacity to address such questions, while also challenging how energy policy conventionally gets done. We outline a political ecology perspective on EU energy policy that illuminates how the distribution of social power affects access to energy services, participation in energy decision-making and the allocation of energy’s environmental and social costs.

In this article we introduce a Special Issue of Energy Research and Social Science focused on energy infrastructure and the political economy of national development. Many countries are experiencing transformational growth in energy infrastructure, such as transmission and distribution systems; import, export and storage facilities; the development of domestic energy resources; and construction of new power generating stations based on wind, water, coal, gas and nuclear sources. Large-scale projects like these are frequently justified by appeals to grand narratives – promoting economic growth, securing energy supply, modernizing energy service provision, and transitioning to more environmentally sustainable energy systems - in which the fate of the nation is closely tied to infrastructural development. The papers in this collection present compelling empirical evidence of how claims for energy infrastructure’s national significance and/or necessity intersect with the (re)production of political and economic power. Drawing on case material from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe, they highlight the capacity of different energy technologies and infrastructural assemblages to shape political and economic outcomes beyond their role in storing, transporting or transforming energy. This Introduction to the Special Issue does three things. First, it characterises the scale and significance of the contemporary ‘infrastructural moment’, observing how, in many national contexts, energy policy-making remains centralised and divorced from public participation. Second, it critically differentiates existing literature on the political economy of energy infrastructure to identify five distinctive ways in which research understands the ‘political work’ infrastructure performs. Third, it introduces the papers in the Special Issue and organises them into four key themes. Overall, the Introduction affirms the importance for social science of understanding the economically and politically constitutive power of energy infrastructures. The critical reflexivity this requires is essential to moving towards energy infrastructures that are just, equitable and sustainable.

An ideal form of smart city planning would focus on the availability of urban amenities that can meet the basic needs of a resident's material life, civil connections, and humanistic spirit. Previous studies have concentrated on analyzing the spatial distribution of urban services, with less attention on their contribution as local urban amenities. In this study, we propose a spatial dynamic modeling approach based on urban amenities using social media data from Google Place API to provide locational information on potential resident interactions. We use a representative region in Europe (Stockholm County, SE) to simulate and project urban development in the region until 2050. Our circular conceptual framework of spatial information and feedback supports decision-makers in testing possible urban planning scenarios that align with the vision of a smart city. Simulation results reveal the interplay between human-land interactions on a specific spatial-temporal scale, and we analyze scenario outcomes in relation to commercial and residential land uses. Overall, our study provides a new perspective on human-social behavior-driven urban development, through a smart, spatial dynamic model as a planning support system that can enhance realism, and ultimately help realize planned development objectives in the region.

Although urban scenario planning is widely applied for exploring various directions of urban development, it often has high requirements on the medium of quantitative information analysis and transformation. Thus, this study establishes a method of combining scenario planning with a spatial dynamic planning support system to predict urban growth. Specifically, a scenario-based spatial dynamic modelling method is integrated with the information module of planning policy for better decision support. The integrated modelling method is applied for an actual urban land use planning case of Nanjing, an evolving city in China. The spatial forms of future urban land use are simulated under four different pre-set policy scenarios. The differences in simulated results under multi-criteria restrictions reveal the effectiveness and practical value of the integration approach. The findings of this study provide policymakers with a process-based approach to test and evaluate ‘what-if’ consequences and help stakeholders reach consensus.

Global energy geographies are changing, call it by will or by market forces. As coal production declines or consumption is phased out in parts of the Global North, the future of coal will likely be decided in the Global South. In this article, we explore energyscapes, as multiple and nested sites of connectivity over energy, and their relation to energy justice, environmental conflicts and social movements in new geographies of coal. By putting into question the reproduction of multiple levels of socio-environmental injustices related to coal’s extraction and consumption, we trace the emerging South-South coal links with an empirical focus on Colombia and Turkey. Coal extraction and consumption, respectively, in these geographically distant but increasingly connected countries are linked by multiscalar socio-ecological interactions and conflicts. After exploring these interactions, we examine the changing energyscapes of coal operating on different layers (the market, the physical, and the socio-environmental damages) between the two countries. Our analysis reveals that these new geographies are anchored in cross-scalar environmental injustices and democratic deficits, only sustained with top-down measures and emerging bilateral dependencies. The coming challenge for energy justice, therefore, is to link local communities' claims and democratization of energyscapes between the supply and the demand sides.

The scenario integrated modelling is a top priority work during the design of a new tokamak, as the Divertor Tokamak Test facility (DTT) under construction at the ENEA Research Center in Frascati. The first simulations of the main baseline scenarios contributed to the optimization of the DTT project, particularly with regard to the machine size and heating systems, besides serving as reference for diagnostics design. In this paper we report the first simulations of the full power baseline scenario in the final configuration of the machine and heating mix.

Urban and regional areas worldwide exhibit a complex and uneven distribution of activities with certain areas attracting more people during different time periods. In this study we systemically classify different parts of the urban area which are most attractive as measured by their ability to attract visitors. A weekly visiting profile is constructed for each travel demand zone and thereafter clustered to identify areas with common attraction patterns. We leverage on the availability of longitudinal individual mobility traces in the form of smart card data transactions. We apply our method to the case study of the multi-modal public trans-port system of the Stockholm urban agglomeration area. The results of our clustering based on the weekly visiting profiles reveal four distinctive types of visiting attraction based on the intensity and temporal distribution of activities performed. The results of this study can be used to inform planners and decision makers about the main activity locations of travellers and how their temporal patterns vary across the metropolitan area and the design of related policies.

The way spatial information has been approached by literature in crimeanalysis varies highly, following both the development of urban criminologyas a discipline (Shaw and McKay 1942, Newman 1972, Cohen andFelson 1979, Brantingham and Brantingham 1991, Sampson et al. 1997,Wikström 2003, 2004) and the diffusion of spatial technologies such asGeographic Information Systems (GIS) in human sciences (Haining1990, 2003, Anselin 1999, Fotheringham and Rogerson 2002, Chaineyand Ratcliffe 2006). In this article, I review how certain notions of spacehave been incorporated into urban criminology research using GIS.

The objective of this article is to discuss the use of Geographical Information (GI) and spatial analyticalmethodologies in urban safety research and planning. Based on previous empirical examples, the article discusses advances and challenges of studying crime and perceived safety using GI and spatial analytical methodologies. Thearticles reviews the analysis of crime and perceived fear at the micro-level landscape followed by a discussion of ecological studies often searching for associations between socio-economic characteristics of small areas. The use ofGI and visualisation techniques has also been incorporated into research and planning in public participation schemes and, more recently, into new methodologies aiming at predicting human movement patterns using real-timedata. The paper also reviews some of the current challenges for spatial urban safety research and concludes with prospects on the value of this form of analysis in the near future.

This chapter compares crime rates in Sweden with those in United States and United Kingdom. In all three countries, urban crime rates are higher than rural ones, regardless of definitions of crime types and how rural areas are conceptualized. The chapter discusses evidence about the so-called “convergence hypothesis” of urban and rural crime rates. Crime victimization disproportionately affects more urban than rural residents, regardless of crime trends, country, or differences in rural–urban contexts. Urban areas are often more criminogenic than rural areas not because they concentrate lots of people per area but because urban areas offer more opportunities for crime than rural ones do. This assumption is particularly true for property crimes. Robbery, regarded as a violent offense, seems to follow the trend for violent crimes more than the trend for property offenses. Levitt presents the percentage decline in homicide, violent crime, and property crime from 1991 to 2001 by region in the United States, urban–rural, and city size.

This chapter examines the potential of GIS in combination with spatial statisticsin an exploratory analysis of urban geography of offenses in two Scandinavian cities.The term exploratory analysis implies here the use of techniques for detection ofpatterns in data (clusters) as well as statistical modeling. Techniques such as Kmeansportioning and Kulldorff’s scan test are used to provide a simplified representationof where significant statistical concentrations of offenses occur across thecity, while regression models are applied to explain such clusters. Three clustertechniques are applied to data on pickpocketing in Copenhagen, the capital ofDenmark. This is followed by an attempt to explain patterns of vandalism usingdemographic, socioeconomic, and land use covariates in Malmö, the third largestSwedish city. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the strengths and limitationsof these techniques for local planning.

The objective of this article is to assess the levels and spatial patterns of crime in rural Sweden This involves a summary of the changing levels and composition of a selected group of offences from 1996 to 2007 in two groups of rural areas (remote and accessible) in relation to urban areas Crime rates are modelled cross-sectionally as a function of the municipalities structural indicators Geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial statistics techniques are used to assess shifting patterns of concentration of thefts and violence as well as for modelling crime rates Findings show that rural areas have become more criminogenic than they were a decade ago Changes in the rates and geography were found using cluster techniques for both violence and theft. Although models of rural crime do not show any special rural dimension the predicting variables in models containing both urban and rural areas are not exactly the same as in models with rural areas only Crime is often linked to the presence of alcohol-selling premises characteristics of family structure and proportion of young male population.

The objective of this article is to investigate changes since the early 1980s in offence patterns for residential burglary, theft of and from cars, and vandalism in Stockholm City using methods from spatial statistics. The findings of previous Swedish studies on crime patterns and the insights provided by different theories, notably one propounded by Wikstrom (1991), provide a background for this study and are briefly reviewed. The analytical elements of the article are presented in two main parts. The first consists of a brief description of methodological procedures to obtain robust estimates of small-area standardized offence ratios. Attention is pail to both the spatial framework and the method of calculating rates. Standardized offence ratios (SORs) are calculated and mapped using GIS, and the Getis-Ord statistic is used to identify areas of raised incidence. The variation in a relative risk is modeled as a function of socioeconomic variables using the linear regression model, recognizing the complications raised by the spatial nature of the data. Results suggest that while there have been no dramatic changes in the geographies of these offences in Stockholm City during the last decade, there have been some shifts both in geographical patterns and in their association with underlying socioeconomic conditions.

Urban experts have long recognised crime and fear of crime as dominant challenges to sustainable cities. A sustainable community is a place free from the fear of crime, where a feeling of security underpins a wider sense of place attachment and place attractiveness. In this article, we follow the recent strand of Western research and suggest a framework for assessing safety, which includes the analysis of the geography of crime, fear of crime and crime prevention. Empirical evidence is based on Vilnius, Lithuania. Findings show that whilst Vilnius' geography of crime shows patterns similar to those found in Western cities, fear of crime shows a complex pattern, playing a minor role when citizens judge their residential quality. Crime prevention incorporates top-down features as well as approaches previously adopted by Western cities. The article concludes with an assessment of the proposed framework and directions for future work.

In this paper, we test hypotheses about the spatial variation in rates of robbery in West and East European cities (Cologne, Germany and Tallinn, Estonia). This comparison represents an interesting case study because Tallinn is an example of former socialist cities which have undergone a period of profound political and socio-economic change since the country's independence in the early 1990s (including EU membership). These changes are expected to have implications for the level and composition of offences as well as their geographies. Using cross-sectional datasets, we examine whether or not levels and patterns of robbery in Tallinn follow similar processes to the ones found in Cologne applying GIS (Geographical Information System) and spatial statistical techniques. Findings show that although levels of robberies (rates) are higher in Tallinn than in Cologne, their geography (ratios) follows the same overlapping components of social contexts, as social disorganization and, particularly, routine activities.

Understanding Differential Economic Performance (DEP) at the local andregional level is a key element in devising practical strategies and programmes forsustainable regional development in different contexts. This paper contributes to theunderstanding of the factors underlying persistent differences in DEP between rurallocalities. The basic hypothesis is that the DEP of rural areas can be explained by acombination of ‘tangible’ and ‘less tangible’ factors and the way in which these interactin specific national, regional and local contexts. Natural and human resources,infrastructure, economic structure and investments are together with institutions,networks and community values the most decisive factors that help to characterise DEPfor the Swedish case studies. Findings show that such factors not only define the differentopportunities and constraints for local development, but also illustrate how effective thelocal and regional system is in tapping into resources and opportunities and inameliorating constraints. This sheds light on the importance of taking a broaderperspective regarding policies towards regional development, making them much morefocused on contextual and environmental aspects than uni-faceted, sectoral measures. Thepaper also provides a discussion of the implications of the results for policy and gives anaccount of new research questions for future studies.

Our objective in this paper is to argue for a new use of geographic information systems-GIS in local planning as an auxiliary tool for decisionmaking. We review the use of the GIS technique in earlier research studies and represent the empirical findings from using GIS in a quality-of-life study in conjunction with an urban renewal project of a residential area in Stockholm County, Sweden. Special attention is given to the potential of GIS for mapping qualitative data representing people's needs and judgments about their residential areas. We conclude with a discussion of future challenges in using GIS techniques in combination with the Internet for social analysis in renewal planning. One of the arguments proposed is that the tool can be used to promote the involvement of urban residents.

An individual’s decision to commit a crime is influenced, among other things, by his/her whereabouts over time and space. In this article, we suggest the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), combined with space-time budget techniques, to visualise and track individuals’ daily activities patterns. We first test several GIS-based visualisation techniques for handling spatial and temporal dimensions of activity patterns using a dataset of adolescents in Peterborough, UK. Later, we show how these spatial methods can support the creation of measures of environmental exposure that may help predict group level offending. Findings indicate that visualisation techniques are effective tools for exploratory analysis of how individuals differ in their patterns of activity across the city. Results also show that tracking groups of individuals by using measures of environmental exposure, in combination with individual characteristics and settings, can help explain differences in their levels of offending.