The aim of this thesis is to understand how a repertoire of municipal planning narratives evolved and how these were used as a means to explain, legitimise and produce change in a city that went through a process of urban transformation. The focus is set on the role of narratives in municipal plans as a mental preparation for change. In order to reach this aim, a framework for narrative analysis is developed that shall facilitate a critical reading of such municipal planning documents as comprehensive plans. This shall help to understand among other things how place and community are constructed. This framework is used to interpret four documents of the municipality of Karlskrona, one introductory guide for new inhabitants from 1980, and three consecutive comprehensive plans, adopted in 1991, 2002 and 2010. In short, the narrative analysis consists of four different ways of reading each respective document. First, more or less coherent narratives are identified in the texts. Second, they are analysed with respect to their literary and rhetoric form, in a way that is inspired by historian and literary theorist Hayden White. A third reading places the documents’ narratives into their historical context. Finally, they are classified as certain narratives of place identity on the basis of a typology developed by sociologist Manuel Castells. He states that identities can be constructed with help of narratives that legitimise the existing societal structures, that stand in opposition to these structures, or that create a new identity out of available resources. Based on these readings, I find that the four documents use very different literary and rhetorical forms and that they construct the place’s identity in ways clearly distinct from each other. They express various moral and political perspectives and convey clearly distinct social norms regarding the role of inhabitants and the municipality. Over the decades, there has been a clear shift of expressed values from those that support a leading role of the (local) state in fostering local development to those that highlight the importance of market actors and market forces. A similar change has occurred from the pronunciation of state responsibility for the inhabitant’s well-being to a greater focus on individual responsibility. This confirms the notion that municipal planning is increasingly influenced by ideas of neoliberal development. It could also be observed that storytelling and a purposeful narrative construction of place identity have become more prominent as instruments of planning. Planning narratives were clearly used to explain and legitimise shifts or persistence in municipal policymaking. Due to this it can be concluded that in the eyes of local policy makers, the municipality seems to have gone through a complete process of urban transformation from being in a state of decline to one of stabilised growth.

Denna studie handlar om social hållbarhet och om hur fyra olika kommuner i den fysiska planeringen hanterar och metodiskt arbetar med detta ämne. Syftet är att undersöka vilken prioritet som frågor kring social hållbarhet har i den kommunala planeringsprocessen och hur man metodiskt arbetar med dessa frågor. Syftet är också att undersöka den sociala hållbarhetens potentiella koppling till blandstaden. Undersökningen har genomförts genom att studera kommunernas översiktsplaner, utvalda detaljplaner och de policydokument som planerna hänvisar till. Innehållet har sedan analyserats i relation till teorier kring social hållbarhet och blandstaden. Intervjuer med tjänstemän på samhällsbyggnadsenheterna på respektive kommun har också genomförts för att få en bild av hur man i planprocessen hanterar detta. Resultatet visar på att man i kommunernas översiktsplaner på liknande sätt avhandlar ämnet social hållbarhet och att man även har liknande målsättningar och visioner kring ämnet. I de studerade detaljplanerna skiljer sig dock i vilken utsträckning och på vilket sätt social hållbarhet behandlas i planbeskrivningarna. Större planer tenderar att ha större inslag av reflektioner kring planens inverkan på sociala hållbarhetsfrågor, medan många mindre planer inte alls avhandlar ämnet. Genom de intervjuer som genomfördes framkom att planering kring dessa frågor anses svårt och man många gånger inte anser sig ha specifika metoder som kan att påverka den fysiska planeringen. Alternativt anser man inte att kommunen som organisation använder de metoder som finns. De konkreta metoder som kommunerna använde var; markanvisning, medborgardialog och socialkonsekvensanalys. En tjänsteman nämnde att hen personligen använde Göteborgsmatrisen och en annan hade kontinuerliga möten med lokala mäklare för att följa flyttrender bland kommunens invånare. Samtliga tjänstemän talade om "blandstad", om än i varierande termer, som tätt sammankopplat med socialt hållbara städer och samhällen. De reflektioner som resultatet av denna undersökning slutligen genererat handlar om socialkonsekvensanalysens potentiella roll som konkret metod för kommuner att tillämpa men också om ett eventuellt behov av en lagstiftning liknande den som finns för upprättande av en miljökonsekvensbeskrivning. Båda dessa verktyg borde kunna användas på ett analyserande sätt för att värdera och bedöma eventuella åtgärders inverkan på sociala och ekologiska värden. / This bachelor thesis is about social sustainability, more specifically it is about how four different municipal areas handles issues about social sustainability in their spatial planning. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the priority of this topic and which methods that are used to deal with this subject. The purpose is also to investigate the possible connection between social sustainability and mixed use-city. The analysis has been made by studying comprehensive plans, detailed development plans and other documents connected to the plans. The content of these document has then been analyzed in relation to theories about social sustainability and mixed use-city. Municipal officials have been interviewed to get at more nuanced view on how social sustainability is incorporated into the process of planning. The result shows that the four comprehensive plans in a similar way talk about the aims of planning for social sustainability. In the detailed development plans the difference however is significant, varying to what extent and in what way social sustainability is described the planning specification. Bigger plans tend to include the subject in a more extensive way, whilst smaller many plans don't incorporate social sustainability at all. During the interviews many of the officials said that planning for social sustainability is difficult matter and called for more concrete methods, and for the municipality to use the methods available, to affect the spatial planning. The methods used were; land allocation, civil dialogue and social impact assessment. One official mentioned that he/she personally used the Gothenburg-matrix and another had regular meetings with local brokers. All officials talked about mixed use in connection to social sustainability. The conclusion that the result of this analysis finally led to is about the social impact assessment as a suitable method for planning for social sustainability, but also about the potential need for a legislation. Perhaps that could be the way to include social sustainability into the process of planning.

While there is considerable academic research on the intersection of comprehensive plans, finance policies, zoning policies and how these factors influence real estate developers' choice of what land to develop and what buildings to construct on that land, little is understood about whether these three variables promote or hinder real estate developers' choice of whether to build communities that promote healthy living. Using urban planning theory as the foundation, the purpose of this correlational study was to determine how real estate developers' decisions are made to support healthy New Urbanism development in the United States. Secondary data from the Urban Land Institute were used for this multiple regression study that explored the degree to which comprehensive plans, finance, and zoning policies predict the likelihood that real estate developers will build New Urbanism communities in the United States. Findings indicated that comprehensive plans, finance policies, and zoning policies had a statistically significant influence on real estate developers' decisions on the types of communities to build in the United States by 53.6%, 46.8%, and 71.6% respectively p < .05. The information presented in this study is important to urban planners/designers, health care professionals, and municipal officials because of the intra and interdisciplinary approach of the built environment as a nonmedical determinant of health. Cultivating public and private collaboration to develop public policy could affect social change by directly affect the alterations and improvements in the built environment health that either promote or impede healthy outcomes.

Transitioning to a low-carbon energy system includes deploying renewables such as wind power, which has been installed in Sweden since the 1980s. After a 20 to 25-year lifetime, a wind turbine´s end-of-life options come into play, therefore many of the turbines deployed in Sweden prior to 2011 will reach this mark by 2035. To utilize a site´s wind resource in the best possible way, full repowering is considered in an assessment of seven case studies in Swedish municipalities with the highest deployed pre-2011 wind power capacity. Each case study uses various turbine models to evaluate full repowering scenarios. The most profitable scenarios are estimated through the investment over production (I/P) value and the break-even electricity price. The identified municipalities’ comprehensive plans are reviewed in terms of repowering strategies and wind power deployment guidelines. Only three out of seven investigated municipalities consider repowering in comprehensive plans, with Gotland being best prepared in terms of repowering strategies. Strömsund and Eslöv mention repowering in their comprehensive plans with no specific guidelines. Restrictive policies were identified in the municipality of Laholm, where the maximum total height of turbines is 150m, decreasing the potential annual energy production of an analyzed case study by 64%. The municipalities of Falkenberg, Laholm, Piteå, and Åsele do not include repowering in their comprehensive plans. All the simulated repowering scenarios increased the annual energy production of the identified sites by up to 73%, lowered the number of turbines by up to 70%, decreased the wake losses by up to 77%, and decreased the noise level by 10% while increasing the potential shadow flicker by 19%. The results of the study indicate a possible divide between the intention of the municipalities of Eslöv, Strömsund, and Åsele to maximize energy production from wind power at each exploited site on the one hand and the business cases that developers face on the other. The results suggest the turbines which increase energy production the most at already developed sites, are not necessarily the ones with the lowest investment over production (I/P) value or the lowest break-even electricity price.