Swedish neighborhood shows how cities can push back against developer-driven planning
A new study of Vallastaden, a Swedish urban development project, reveals that municipalities can wrest meaningful control from market-driven developers—but partial approaches won't solve affordability crises. For city planners and policymakers, the finding suggests where alternatives to neoliberal urban models might work, and where they will fail.
Originaltitel: Making the post-neoliberal city? Vallastaden and the limits and prospects of moderately heterodox initiatives to transcend hegemonic planning practices
<p>While a large body of scholarship has explored the proliferation of explicitly radical initiatives to challenge the dominance of neoliberal approaches to urban planning, less attention has been devoted to what this paper suggests labeling as moderately heterodox experiments to foster alternatives to these practices, but not transform neoliberal urban development regimes at their core. The paper sheds light on the limits and prospects of such initiatives by exploring the visions and outcomes of the Vallastaden project in Linköping, Sweden, intended to chart a new path for urban development through the construction of a purportedly socially sustainable neighborhood. By devising and implementing rather unconventional planning practices, the municipality that spearheaded the project managed to wield comparatively extensive influence over the development of the neighborhood. However, the key goal of building a substantial amount of affordable housing was not achieved. The paper postulates that while such moderately heterodox projects are imbued with important limitations, they can open up cracks in hegemonic urban development regimes. Projects of this kind, which incorporate practices capable of actually changing planning, should be differentiated from those where such claims amount to mere rhetoric. Urban scholars may benefit from giving more attention to initiatives along these lines.</p>