From Folkhem to lifestyle housing in Sweden: segregation and urban form, 1930s–2010s

Abstract

This article analyses the political and ideological transformations underlying the gradual privatisation and deregulation of the mid-twentieth-century Keynesian model of housing provision in Sweden. We identify a series of three political and ideological shifts in housing policy and urban form since the 1930s: regulating Folkhem housing, deregulating Folkhem housing, and back to business in housing. We argue that even though the Folkhem parole of ‘housing for all’ differs extensively from the current situation where the market is ‘housing the privileged’, segregation trends have, from the Folkhem to the post-welfare period, been shaped by both state interventions and market forces. Second, we argue that there is a continuing trend through which newly constructed housing has metamorphosed from a basic human right for the working class into an expression of individual distinction and ‘style’ for the upper middle and middle classes. While privileged classes, more than ever before in modern Swedish housing history, have the possibility to choose new forms of housing, the most impoverished groups live in residual and often stigmatised peripheral housing areas. One main conclusion is that recent forms of housing for privileged groups signal a cultural and ideological shift towards new, more elitist conceptions of housing and privilege.

Keywords:

• Folkhem
• housing
• segregation
• Sweden
• urban form

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the insightful comments of two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council Formas [grant number 2010-1043].

Notes

1. Folkhemmet (the people's home) was the popular name adopted in the 1930s for this Social Democratic project of the Keynesian welfare state.

2. The Saltsjöbaden Agreement was signed in December 1938, in the district of Saltsjöbaden, Stockholm, between the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and the Swedish Employers Association (SAF).

3. Allmännyttan is often translated into English as ‘public housing’ or ‘municipal housing companies’. However, as the Swedish name indicates (allmän means ‘for all people’, or ‘common’; nytta means ‘use’ or ‘benefit’), it was initiated as a valid housing option of housing for one and all, without the connotation of poverty or vulnerability the term public housing sometimes implies; hence, our translation into Common Benefit Companies. These companies are large actors in many municipalities; 270 out of 290 municipalities own CBCs, and together the CBCs own 17% of the total Swedish housing stock (SCB, 2013).

4. The Swedish system for regulating rent levels is still calculated from several parameters connected to the use value and not to the market exchange value, hence the term user.

5. Called barnrikehus in Swedish, they suffered from social stigma when built, but today are considered cultural and financial investments.

6. The name Bovieran is a combination of Swedish for housing ‘Bo’ and ‘Riviera’; Bovieran – signalling a lifestyle of living on the Mediterranean Riviera.

7. 2010:879. The Act and Chapter 12 in the Swedish Land Code (Jordabalken), in force since 1 January 2011, state that Common Benefit Companies for municipal rental housing ‘shall operate in business-like forms’.