In the upcoming years there will be a growing need for sustainable energy transitions in a local as well as global context, making it necessary to gain a better understanding of factors influencing their success. In this context, citizen participation is considered an important tool in achieving sustainable energy transitions, as the active participation of the local population may help in lowering obstacles, such as resistance against planned projects. This case study focuses on the role citizen participation plays in the fossil-fuel free energy development on the Danish island Samsø, often referred to as Denmark’s Renewable Energy Island. A qualitative case study approach, centered around expert interviews with stakeholders and relevant policy papers, was adopted. Among other things, a focus on dialogue in participation could be observed, and emerging forms of participation were identified. Citizen participation on Samsø seems to be impacted by its situation as an island and seems relevant especially in legitimatizing the transition and providing relevant resources, however some drawbacks, such as higher difficulties in reaching agreements, could also be observed. For future projects, the findings seem to suggest the need for citizen participation, together with a need for some sort of formal planning and the acknowledgment that ever-changing external and internal conditions, together with the specific local conditions, may impact the way in which participation can and should be implemented.

This thesis examines the marketing of Malmö’s kulturljudzon (cultural sound zone) in the context of recent neoliberal planning practices in the city, with a focus on how the experiences of do-it-yourself (DIY) cultural actors compare to the kulturljudzon’s promotion and how they navigate relationships with municipal and economic representatives. Culture’s heightened role in current urban planning processes globally has transformed how participants in the cultural scenes of cities experience their environments, making it necessary to understand the ways that this has occurred in Malmö. Two qualitative methods, a functional documentary analysis of public texts about the kulturljudzon and a thematic qualitative text analysis of interviews with cultural actors, a property owner, and municipal employees are utilized to explore the manner in which the kulturljudzon has been marketed, how this marketing compares and differs to perspectives found within Malmö’s music scene, and the lived realities of DIY musicians and organizers in connection to the kulturljudzon. The analysis has revealed that the kulturljudzon has been presented as being a result of collaborative, participatory, and bottom-up planning processes, at times where culture and business are said to have shared interests, and promoted as a means for the city to grow its attractiveness. Additionally, once interviews were incorporated, DIY cultural actors expressed their limitations in the kulturljudzon, such as the pressure to produce profit from their work, their difficulties in finding and keeping rental spaces, and the feeling that the municipality cared about the symbolism of the kulturljudzon and what it meant for the city’s economy more than the substance of the culture within it. Interviews with a property owner and municipal employees deepened this discussion by providing insight as to the roles that different types of values play in their decision-making, their relationships to culture and cultural actors, and their goals for the kulturljudzon, its surrounding neighborhood, and Malmö as a whole. The data revealed sharp differences in power and alignments of stakeholders in this area, with the municipality and property manager combining their interests more readily than either were able to align with the cultural actors interviewed. The results of this study have implications for future research that prioritizes perspectives from urban DIY music scene members and cultural actors in understanding urban transformations, as this research can highlight shortcomings and misguidedness in planning processes. Further, this study exemplifies a need for planning officials to educate themselves on DIY cultural practices if they wish to create truly informed and participatory policies that promote all levels of cultural production and expression in their cities.