https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6634-3976
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ABSTRACT
Spatial planning has gone through significant shifts in recent years. Planners today face land use challenges, such as sprawl reduction and mixed use redevelopment, which must be reconciled with technological innovations and changing political and economic pressures. At the same time, their end goal is not just to support economic growth, but also to improve people’s health and social well-being in a place-based framework. Keeping in mind the debate on equity, participation and the achievement of sustainable well-being for all, this paper looks at these issues from both a theoretical point of view, as well as their practical implementation. It critically examines some aspects of spatial planning and territorial governance from Sweden and Switzerland, discussing their flaws and contradictions, as well as pointing out positive features. Overall, the paper suggests that current spatial planning philosophy should privilege an integrated holistic approach, avoiding policies that, in the name of increased speed and efficiency, might lead to partiality, randomness and fragmentation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Cohesion Policy objectives are the reduction of regional disparities, the strengthening of cohesion (territorial, social and economic), and the promotion of territorial development.
2 The Report emphasized the potential usefulness of a place-based approach to development policy in the EU (Barca, Citation2009).
3 Although the two countries have very different government systems (Sweden is a constitutional monarchy within the EU; Switzerland a confederation of cantons outside it), they share commonalities and both can be considered as experimental laboratories from whose planning experience other countries might learn.
4 National/Regional Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (European Commission, Citation2014).
5 London’s policies continue to emphasize the need to reduce the city’s dependence on carbon. Indeed, since 2016 the Mayor of London has applied a zero-carbon standard to new residential development.
6 This attention to public health seems particularly pertinent to planning today, in the light of the 2020 COVID-19 crisis.
8 There is a strong link between sustainability and the QoL of a population, since a community’s economic, environmental and social systems should provide for the well-being and prosperity of all its current and future members (Hart, Citation2000), while unsustainable exploitation of the environment and its resources has a direct impact on our well-being (Grünberger & Omann, Citation2011, p. 1).
10 Vision and Strategies around the Baltic Sea (VASAB), an intergovernmental grouping of the eleven Baltic countries, <http://www.vasab.org/>.
11 The learning exchange is often reciprocal. One of the ESPON COMPASS 2016–18 project informants observed that ‘the narrative around the notion of sustainability developed in the Northern and Baltic countries has been borrowed also by EU documents’ (personal communication).
12 Hammarby Sjöstad (Hammarby Lake City) in the south of Stockholm is an urban redevelopment project, which has transformed a large disused industrial brownfield site into a successful eco-district.
13 The project and the relationship with private actors were facilitated by the City’s planning monopoly and ownership of about 75% of developable land within its boundaries (Metzger & Rader Olsson, Citation2013).
14 The Hammarby Model includes energy conservation measures to reduce heat consumption by 50% and its innovative closed loop system allows waste, water and energy to integrate into each other. For example, heat is generated locally through bioenergy and the incineration of local waste, and electricity is co-generated. In 2015, approximately 80% of the total energy use in Hammarby Sjöstad was renewable.
15 Baeten (Citation2012, p. 40) contrasts the project’s short-term contribution to Malmö’s socio-cultural revival and the creation of urban wealth, with the prediction that in the long run it will lead to social and environmental problems.
16 For them the fact that partizanship importantly determines municipal social policies in the Zurich metropolitan area, ‘even suggests that, in liberal welfare regimes, these spatial inequalities are due to local choice inegalitarianism where right-wing political preferences rather than social needs determine the extent of redistributive policies in suburban municipalities’ (Kübler & Rochat, Citation2017, p. 122).
17 Urban sprawl is a serious ongoing economic, environmental and social issue in Switzerland, where only a third of the surface area is available for settlement. It increased dramatically between 1960 and 1980 and then again from 2002 to 2010, mainly due to large-scale suburbanization (Jaeger & Schwick, Citation2014).
18 Every village, town or city has an assembly where citizens can present proposals that are then voted on.
19 In 2018, the country had 2,148,300 foreign residents, according to the Federal Statistical Office, and in some cantons the percentage is high, for example 47.9% in Canton Geneva in 2018.
20 It has the power to lead negotiations on co-financing, in which municipalities, regions, towns and the business sector can all participate and influence the result.