This paper argues that organising spatial planning policies by funding local projects constitutes a steering mode that organises knowledge in such a way that it contributes to displacing “the political” in local spatial planning practice. “The political” is conceptualised as a space of agonistic conflicts and choicemaking (Mouffe 2005a). Such an organisation of knowledge operates to consolidate the initial framing of the problem, in which the goal and the possibility to monitor the goal is in focus, rather than challenging or questioning it in the name of justness and fairness. This is illustrated through an analysis of conceptualisations of knowledge within 127 project applications within the Swedish government's Safe and Gender Equal planning policy (2008–2010), which the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning facilitated in conjunction with the County Administration Boards of Sweden.

This dissertation constitutes a critical examination of Swedish spatial planning for safety. Spatial planning for safety rests on a number of assumptions about the desired order of the world. These assumptions appear as given and unproblematic, making the formulation of alternatives appear unnecessary. This dissertation provides an account of how, and on what basis a spatial planning problem such as ‘fear and insecurity’ is formulated and acted upon. It is an account of how and what conceptions of knowledge operate to legitimise ideological representations of spatial planning problems. And furthermore, what these ideological representations of spatial planning problems substantially entail, so as to allow for a political spatial planning practice that formulates and deliberates alternatives. This is carried out by analysing assumptions of public life and knowledge within Swedish spatial planning for safety. 

This dissertation finds that Swedish spatial planning for safety constitutes ‘certainty’ as a hegemonic criterion for participating in public life, which operates to limit the articulation of alternative discourses in spatial planning for safety. The desired for safe public life is organised based on visual certainty, where the urban fabric should be configured in such ways as to allow for stereotypical visual identifications of one another. Such a public life reflects an individualised practice, where perceptions of fear should be governed by individuals themselves, by independently assessing situations and environments in terms of risks. This individualised conduct is coupled with the fostering of active subjects, which encompasses being engaged in the local residential areas as well as in one another. Such substantial content of ‘planning for safety’ brings about tensions in terms of its ideological legitimating basis, by moving from principles of ‘rights’, where the individual constitutes the first ethical planning subject, to unitary principles of ‘collective values’, in which the ‘community’ constitutes the first ethical planning subject. These presuppositions are further enabled through the ways in which knowledge is conceptualised in spatial planning. This dissertation argues that a hegemonic instrumental emphasis on knowledge in spatial planning prevails. Having such a hegemonic emphasis on knowledge has the implication that even though spatial planning adopts different assumptions, or moves between alternative assumptions of knowledge, the knowledge becomes meaningful only in its instrumental implementation. The instrumental emphasis on knowledge should be regarded in light of the rational and goal-oriented nature of project-based planning, which constitutes a logic that constrains the emphasis on knowledge in spatial planning. This dissertation argues further that if spatial planning should be considered a political practice that debates its goals and values, a politicisation of the emphasis on knowledge in spatial planning is imperative.

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.

This paper seeks to enable for conceptual resistance towards a desirable urban order of ‘safe public realms’, to which the ‘planning for safety’ directly contributes. One way of engaging in that kind of resistance is by contributing to politicising the system of beliefs informing planning for safety. Planning for safety is primarily legitimised morally as the ethically right thing to do given the identified violation of a human right in the public realm, the right to freely move about in the public environment. By drawing from Mouffean agonistic political theory (2005), there is no given interpretation nor implementation of ethical principles such as human rights, but rather different interpretations given what point of reference one is departing from, and should hence be subjected to political struggle. To conceptually set the arena for choice contributes to politicising phenomena which previously have been legitimised as the right or the (only) natural thing to do. ‘Planning for safety’ should therefore be interpreted resting on specific ideological assumptions of public life which frames both how ‘the human right’ is conceptualised as well as what planning solutions are considered possible.This article seeks to establish alternative conceptualisations of public life, with an aim to make visible how there is not one notion of public life and thereby re-politicise the ideolo-gical premises underpinning ‘safety planning’ and thereby allow for conceptual resistance. This is carried out by establishing a discursive field of public life, a kind of conceptual arena for choice making. The discursive field is represented by four different discourses of public life centred around different ideals such as rational, dramaturgical, conflictual and consensual public life. In this conceptual context, lines of conflict have been discerned based on a thematic of purpose, character, criteria for participation and conception of identities, which have taken the form of agonistic dimensions, from which planning discursively can position itself. This paper argues that we first must agonistically agree on what notion of public life should govern the development of our cities, and thereafter discuss what the consequences would be for planning.

Societal challenges affect the ways in which planning is carried out and contribute to new expectations and demands for the skills and abilities of the planner. From having almost solely focused on the regulations of land use through the development of land use plans, have, for example, the facilitator, coordinator, process manager, catalyst, urban designer and spatial agent become new possible roles for the planner to adopt. This article discusses future planning roles and what conceptions spatial planning students have of their future profession. What fundamental knowledge do students need to achieve for their future professional practice? How do they perceive the role of the planner? And, what kind of planner do we, de facto, educate?

Det här är ett specialnummer i fysisk planering med anledning av att institutionen för fysisk planering firar 30 år i år.

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.

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

[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.

Våra städer har under de senaste 100 åren till stor del präglats av bilen(Urry, 2004). Bilismen har påverkat allt från den moderna stadsplaneringens utformning, till hur vi konsumerar, våra boendemönster, arbetsmarknadsre- gionernas utbredning och inte minst dagens fossilberoende och utsläpp av växthusgaser. Traditionellt sett har svensk kommunal planering varit inriktad på att försöka tillgodose en prognostiserad ökad efterfrågan på bilresor, och bilen har varit en given parameter att ta hänsyn till i stadsplaneringen.

Vi vet idag att en omställning av transportsektorn är avgörande för uppfyllandet av de klimatpolitiska målen och FN:s 2030-mål. Såväl forskare som praktiker har därför framhävt behovet av att öka andelen energieffektiva transportslag som gång, cykel och kollektivtrafik. Med god vilja kan det här betraktas som framväxten av ett nytt mer hållbart paradigm - som förvisso är omstritt - men som istället lyfter fram vikten av ett mer hållbart resande och en planeringspraktik där den privatägda bilen inte står i fokus.

(...)

I det här kapitlet undersöker vi specifikt vad kommuner experimenterar om inom mobilitetsområdet, och vilka förväntningar som tillskrivs experimenten. Vilket slags samhälle föreställer de sig? Och hur radikalt annorlunda, eller disruptivt, är detta samhälle ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv?

(från introduktion)

This article examines the space–time situatedness of residing within extra-care housing (ECH) in Sweden. EHC constitutes an example of ordinary housing but is often categorized, along with senior housing, as “in-between housing.” What differentiates the extra-care housing from the ordinary is an age limit for moving in, the provision of communal facilities, and the presence of staff at certain times each week. Two housings with different environmental and architectural conditions have been analyzed through spatial analyses, observations, and interviews with residents (n = 18). The article concludes that the two different assemblings enabled two very different possibilities for accessing “safe aging.” One offered opportunities for the continuation of identities which contributed to feelings of safety, and one demanded the reconstitution of identities for developing meaning in the new housing.

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 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.