Horizontally organised and innovative spaces of dialogue for dealing with ‘wicked problems’ related to housing in rural Sweden

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss co-productive and collaborative processes in rural housing construction in Sweden. The ‘wicked problem’ addressed here is why it is so difficult to build new homes in Swedish rural areas. Our analysis shows that horizontally organised competences may be used in order to form innovative and creative spaces for dialogues around the realisation of house building. These spaces for dialogues are transformed into collaborative and co-productive social events for reconfiguring thoughts and actions in relation to ‘wicked problems’. Using Fagered, Sweden, as a case study, our results show that timing, as well as understanding the motivation of local groups and acknowledging the slowness of planning processes, are crucial for making change.

Keywords:

• innovative spaces for dialogue
• method
• rural
• development
• wicked problems
• housing

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all participants involved in the process of dealing with the housing problem in Fagered. I especially would like to thank Carina, Niklas, Inger, and all others who fight for their place.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docoffic/official/reports/cohesion5/pdf/5cr_en.pdf

2. The authors acknowledge the financial support of the European Commission and the contributions of all the other participants in the LISA (Landsbygdsutveckling i Skandinavien) project, http://interreg-oks.eu/webdav/files/gamla-projektbanken/se/Menu/Projektbank+2007-2013/Projektlista-Kattegat-Skagerrak/LISA/layout/2013.html

Additional information

Funding

This work is funded by Interreg IVA program, Lisakask, www.lisakask.se.