Urban experimentation and testbed planning have emerged as a response for developing solutions to contemporary urban chal- lenges and constitute designated spaces of risk-taking. They repre- sent strategic attempts at reimagining, influencing and even altering urban futures through the specific focus of being open to surprises and the unexpected. The aim of this article is to concep- tualize risk in testbed planning and analyze risk and urban planning approaches to risk-taking. By using mobility experiments in five Nordic municipalities, it is shown that three approaches to risk prevail with regard to different loci of risk in testbed planning. These three approaches are minimizing and shifting responsibilities for individual risk, minimizing and shifting organizational risks and refusing political risks.

I denna rapport har vi redovisat den första delen av två i det tvärvetenskapliga forskningsprojektet LEX-projektet. Hållbara livsmiljöer för psykiskt funktionshindrade. Att integrera bostadsplanering och välfärdsservice genom nya kollaborativa praktiker.  

Vår utgångspunkt var att ta reda på mer om vad som kännetecknar stödinsatser riktade till människor med psykisk funktionsnedsättning och hur dessa organiseras, samt undersöka tvärsektoriell samverkan i fråga om planering för bostadsförsörjning och inkluderande livsmiljöer. 

Vårt material visar att målgruppen för boende- och stödinsatser har förändrats. Personer med funktionsnedsättningar till följd långvarig psykossjukdom utgör fortfarande en central grupp, ofta med behov av insatser med hög servicenivå. Målgruppen för insatserna är dock stadd i förändring och detta har i några kommuner medfört en utveckling mot en mer generell organisation för stödinsatserna utan specialistfunktioner. Boendeinsatser beslutade i enlighet med SoL dominerar men en blandning av förhållningssätt kan ses, från enskilda undantag där LSS tillämpas till en kommun där alla beslut om bostad med särskild service tas enligt LSS. När det gäller verksamhetstyperna för stödinsatser dominerar det traditionella gruppboendet och boendestödet. Vissa menar att gruppboendet som typ kommer på sikt att försvinna, och bland verksamhetsansvariga finns det en samsyn att fältet i stort är på väg mot en inriktning att arbeta i riktning mot ökad självständighet och autonomi för brukarna inom verksamheterna. 

Hur socialtjänst och samhällsbyggnadsförvaltningar arbetar tillsammans med frågor som berör målgruppen skiljer sig åt mellan kommunerna. Arbetet organiseras ibland i nätverk, ibland handlar det om koordinering, i vissa fall samarbete eller samverkan vilket gör att den gemensamma spelplanen ser tämligen olika ut. I en del kommuner finns det fora för kontinuerligt gemensamt arbete, i andra anses det inte behövas alls. Hur möten mellan de båda förvaltningarna organiseras, på vems initiativ och ansvar hanteras på olika sätt. Det är en komplex bild som träder fram där frågor förs fram i olika instanser och på olika nivåer inom den egna förvaltningen såväl som mellan förvaltningarna.  

När det gäller det kommunala bostadsförsörjningsansvaret är arbetet med att ta fram bostadsförsörjningsprogrammet en viktig del. Tjänstepersoner från olika förvaltningar engageras på olika sätt i detta arbete, från samordning och koordinering till långsiktiga strategiska samarbeten. Olika typer av roller utvecklas, som initiativtagare, informationsgivare, expert eller språkrör med olika handlingsutrymmen.Socialtjänstens erfarenhetsbaserade kunskap om rådande situation för olika grupper tas inte alltid i bruk. Att frågan är politisk känslig och hellre förs fram som en bred målsättning om ’bostad för alla’ utan tydligare konkretisering framträder i materialet.  

De kommunala strategierna kring lokalisering av bostäder med särskild service handlar om omvandling av befintliga lokaler, bygga nya boenden i redan uppbyggda bostadsområden samt planering för nya boenden i stadsutvecklingsprocesser. Det övergripande mönstret för lokaliseringen av boenden är i bostadsområden men i utkanten, en kompromiss mellan socialförvaltningens idéer om social inkludering och samhällsbyggnadsförvaltningarnas tankar om integritet. Brukarnas möjligheter att skaffa sig positiva grannkontakter kan dock försvåras av sådana perifera lokaliseringar. 

Vad en inkluderande, ‘god’, livsmiljö skulle kunna vara för personer med psykisk funktionsnedsättning visar sig vara en ny frågeställning för våra informanter. Flera informanter från socialtjänsten inte tidigare funderat över hur boenden och sysselsättning förhåller sig till varandra geografiskt och på vilket sätt det påverkar upplevelser av livsmiljön. Att frågan om inkluderande livsmiljöer för vår målgrupp skulle kunna ses som en del i den bredare samhällsplaneringen var inte självklart för samhällsplanerarna. Det framkom också att det är svårare för kommunen att ställa krav på de som bygger boenden med särskild service och andra liknande omsorgsboenden än när det gäller kommunhus, bibliotek eller simhallar, något som avspeglas i lokalisering och arkitektonisk kvalitet. 

In this report, we have presented the first part of two in the interdisciplinary research project LEX - sustainable Living Environments for people with psychiatric disabilities. Aligning housing planning and social services through eXperimental collaborative practices. 

Our starting point was to find out more about what characterizes support measures aimed at people with mental disabilities and how these are organized, and to investigate cross-sectoral collaboration in terms of planning for housing and inclusive living environments. 

Our material shows that the target group for housing and support initiatives has changed. People with disabilities due to long-term psychological disabilities still constitute a central group, often in need of interventions with a high level of service. However, the target group for the initiatives is changing and this has in some municipalities led to a development towards a more general organization for the support initiatives without specialist functions. Housing initiatives decided in accordance with SoL dominate, but a mixture of approaches can be seen, from individual exceptions where LSS is applied to a municipality where all decisions about housing with special services are made according to LSS. When it comes to the types of activities for support measures, traditional group housing and housing support dominate. Some believe that group housing as a type will eventually disappear, and among those responsible for operations, there is a consensus that the field is generally moving towards a direction to work towards increased independence and autonomy for the users within the operations. 

The ways in which social services and community building administrations work together with issues that affect the target group differs between the municipalities. The work is sometimes organized in networks, sometimes it is about coordination, in some cases cooperation or collaboration. In some municipalities, there are forums for continuous joint work, in others it is not considered necessary at all. How meetings between the two administrations are organized, on whose initiative and responsibilities are handled in different ways. It is a complex picture that emerges where issues are raised in different instances and at different levels within the own administration as well as between the administrations. 

When it comes to municipal housing provision responsibility, the work of developing the housing provision program is an important part. Officials from different administrations are involved in various ways in this work, from coordination and coordination to long-term strategic collaborations. Different types of roles are produced, such as initiators, information providers, experts or spokespersons with different areas of action. The social services' experience-based knowledge of the current situation for different groups is not always used. In the material, the issue appears to be politically sensitive and is presented as a broad goal of 'housing for all', but with limited concretization. 

The municipal strategies for locating housing with special services are about converting existing premises, building new housing in already built-up housing areas and planning for new housing in urban development processes. The overall pattern for the location of housing is in the outskirts of  residential areas, a compromise between the social administration's ideas about social inclusion and the community building administrations' ideas about integrity. However, users' opportunities to acquire positive neighborly contacts may be hampered by such peripheral locations. 

What an inclusive, ‘good’, living environment could be for people with mental disabilities turns out to be a new issue for our interviewed officials. Several informants from the social services have not previously thought about how housing and employment relate to each other geographically and in what way it affects experiences of the living environment. Considering inclusive living environments for our target group as part of the broader community planning was not obvious to the planners. It also emerged that it is more difficult for the municipality to make architectural demands to those who build housing with special services and other similar care housing than what it is to those who construct other public buildings such as city halls, libraries or swimming pools, something that is reflected in location and architectural quality.

I ett livligt fiktivt samtal reflekterar urbana filosofer, tongivande under 1900-talets planeringsdiskussioner, kring staden och framtidens resande.

Finding suitable locations for supported accommodations is crucial both for the wellbeing of individuals with psychiatric disabilities (PD) and to achieve the objectives of the mental health care reform in order to create opportunities for social inclusion. This article explores municipal strategies for localizing supported accommodations for people with PD. In a multiple case study, interviews with 20 municipal civil servants from social services and urban planning were conducted. Three strategies were identified and further analyzed with a public location theory approach: (1) re‐use, i.e., using existing facilities for a new purpose, (2) fill‐in, i.e., infilling new purpose‐built facilities in existing neighborhoods, and (3) insert, i.e., inserting new premises or facilities as part of a new development. The article shows that the “re‐use” strategy was employed primarily for pragmatic reasons, but also because re‐using former care facilities was found to cause less con‐ flicts, as residents were supposedly used to neighbors with special needs. When the “fill‐in” and “insert” strategies were employed, new accommodations were more often located on the outskirts of neighborhoods. This was a way to balance potential conflicts between residents in ordinary housing and residents in supported accommodations, but also to meet alleged viewpoints of service users’ need for a quiet and secluded accommodation. Furthermore, ideas associated with social services’ view of social inclusion and urban planning’s notion of “tricky” tenants significantly influenced localization strategies. Finally, this article is also a call for more empirical research on the decision‐making processes, use of strategies (intended or not) and spatial outcomes, when localizing supported accommodation for people with PD and other groups in need of support and service.

In the governance of housing provision, the public sector is considered unable efficiently to manage such problems through the traditional bureaucratic organizations and associated governing tools. Instead, municipalities are expected to engage in collaborative processes across sectors and with external stakeholders, with the overarching objective to deliver more efficient planning outcomes. As the processes are carried out across sectors, it opens up the opportunity to privilege certain sectors’ perspectives and marginalize others. By drawing from Mouffe's agonistic political theories, this article makes an empirical account of the political in organizing cross-sectoral collaborative planning in Swedish municipalities, with the empirical example of developing municipal programmes for housing provision. The article concludes that social service is severely marginalized in what is generally a depoliticized housing provision planning process. Underpinning the collaboration is the conceptualizing of housing provision as primarily a general deficit in constructing housing. Primarily organizing objectivist knowledge, housing provision is constructed as a technical and procedural matter rather than ideological and political. Through such organizing principles, the overarching housing provision problem remains undealt with, e.g. how do we provide housing to ‘all’ our citizens?

 Urban planning is, in many countries, increasingly becoming intertwined with local climate ambitions, investments in urban attractiveness and “smart city” innovation measures. In the intersection between these trends, urban experimentation has developed as a process where actors are granted action space to test innovations in a collaborative setting. One arena for urban experimentation is urban testbeds. Testbeds are sites of urban development, in which experimentation constitutes an integral part of planning and developing the area. This article introduces the notion of testbed planning as a way to conceptualize planning processes in delimited sites where planning is combined with processes of urban experimentation. We define testbed planning as a multi-actor, collaborative planning process in a delimited area, with the ambition to generate and disseminate learning while simultaneously developing the site. The aim of this article is to explore processes of testbed planning with regard to the role of urban planners. Using an institutional logics perspective we conceptualize planners as navigating between a public sector—and an experimental logic. The public sector logic constitutes the formal structure of “traditional” urban planning, and the experimental logic a collaborative and testing governance structure. Using examples from three Nordic municipalities, this article explores planning roles in experiments with autonomous buses in testbeds. The analysis shows that planners negotiate these logics in three different ways, combining and merging them, separating and moving between them or acting within a conflictual process where the public sector logic dominates.

[From the introduction] This volume is a special issue with contributions that stem from the collaborations of the 2018 AESOP PhD workshop, held 5-8 July at Tjärö island, Sweden. The overarching aim of the workshop was to establish inclusive spaces for dialogue and collaboration between PhD students across countries and continents on issues that pertained to the AESOP’s 2018 congress theme “Making space for hope”. Furthermore the PhD students got the chance to learn from the invited mentors with long experience from the academic planning field. The theme drew from a recognition of the severe challenges facing the world at present, for example, challenges coupled with the climate crisis, growing social inequalities, rapid population growth in urban regions and de-population trends in peripheral regions.