Despite the well-known benefits associated with physical activity, the lack of physical exercise has risen to become one of the most severe health-related problems of the 21st century. Previous studies have found a good health profile and frequent engagement in physical activities to be positively correlated with productivity and mental well-being. Thus, it is of interest for the municipalities to better the health of their inhabitants. The accessibility of health-encouraging facilities, goods, and services have been discovered to be positively related to health and physical exercise. Hence, it is of interest to the municipalities to understand what drives the growth of these amenities. Especially considering that it is easier for municipalities to affect the accessibility of health amenities on a municipal level than changing lifestyle habits on an individual level.The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the growth of “health amenities”, defined as amenities encouraging a healthy lifestyle, is related to the share of high human capital individuals in the Swedish municipalities. To examine this relationship, this paper inspects the percentage change of employees within these establishments across the Swedish municipalities between 2010-2019 through a series of OLS regressions. The results indicate that the growth of health amenities is positively correlated to the share of high human capital individuals in the Swedish municipalities which confirms the hypothesis of this paper.

This thesis aims to investigate how the City of Lund, and Lund University will provide accommodation for researchers associated with the construction of the research facilities ESS and MAX IV. Furthermore, this paper will study what synergies that exist between housing for researchers, the City of Lund, and its university to attract international researchers.  There is a shortage of housing for students and researchers, especially in municipalities with higher education institutions. To solve this, the Swedish government issued a regulation that enabled universities to offer accommodation to further groups of researchers to strengthen Sweden as a research nation. With the ESS and MAX IV as catalysts for growth, the municipality of Lund will function as an important research hub on an international level. The research conducted a study of strategic documents, such as the City of Lund’s comprehensive plans and in-depth comprehensive plan. As well as a qualitative method that implemented interviews, whereby some of the questions were based on the analyzes of the document study. The interviews were constructed from three groups and will be the perspectives this thesis will discuss its results and analysis by.  The results showed the need for strategic documents to include socio-cultural values and place-based innovations to attract knowledge-intense professionals and further highlight the need for cooperation between Lund municipality and Lund University to maintain its guest researchers.

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<p>In this undergraduate thesis you will venture on a journey through the land of democratic values and urban planning. My research question is stated as: whether or not urban planning can show effects on democratic values and whether or not the municipalities in Sweden takes these possible effects into account when planning their city centres. You will in my theory part of this thesis be able to read about different views on urban planning and on democracy. Famous authors like Robert D. Putnam and Richard Florida will be examined as well as other theorists on democracy and urban planning. To be able to map whether or not urban planning matter I have done a thorough research on two cases of urban planning in two of Sweden’s smallest municipalities. Both of them have fairly recently rebuilt their urban centres and my research will try to show how this new urban planning has influenced the democracy in those regions. This research will show to you that thoughts, that urban planning affects the democracy, actually exist and affect the ones who execute and plan the urban centres in the municipalities. On the question whether or not there exist a correlation between urban planning and a well functioning democracy this research will show that no such link is recognizable and that urban planning, for the two cases, did not matter.</p>

This dissertation explores the social patterns and cultural layers of musical "open mics" in New York City. The study uses a qualitative approach which includes methods such as ethnography, in-depth interviewing, historical and discourse analyses focusing on open mics and the popular musicians who attend and perform them. Open mics, short for "open microphones," are public events that allow musicians to perform songs without a pre-planned, formal booking with a club or venue. Owing a historical and discursive connection to the folk hootenannies and jazz jam sessions of the past, these events have proliferated and spread considerably across the United States since the 1990s since their development, by name, in the late 1970s. Open mics not only reflect a do-it-yourself and participatory cultural ethos manifested with other recent expressive cultural activities, but also demonstrate a growing interstitial "musical third place" residing between private practicing and public performance. Musical open mics as musical third places provide musicians and singer/songwriters to network with other musicians, practice new musical compositions and play when other performance opportunities are not readily available. It provides a means for musicians to "hone their craft" in terms of performance methods and also construct musical identities in the almost exclusive company of other working singer/songwriters. This "backstage region" is thus framed and keyed by the musicians onto a continuum between two theoretical poles: performance practicing and practicing performance. Performance practicing as defined in this study frames a more performance-oriented display for musicians in locations called "closed open mics" or COMs. These settings, also residing on a theoretical continuum are socially more exclusive in terms of performance types, the aesthetic careers of the performers, the genres represented and the sociological makeup of the setting participants in general. OOMs or "open open mics," on the other hand, usually have a more fluid, diverse sociological composition of musical performers, performance types, and musical genres played and represented in these mainly weekly events. Closed open mics align into more homogeneous, isomorphic settings comprising "local open mic scenes" and open open mics remain more heterogeneous, socially inclusive, and unsettled as "pre-scenes."

Platsmarknadsföring är ett växande fenomen internationellt och i Sverige, då det påstås att ”städer tävlar mot andra städer” om besöksnäringen, nyetableringar av företag och befolkning. Att platsmarknadsföra sin stads specifika värden, genom att paketera och ”sälja” in staden, har blivit mer av en regel än ett undantag, där man genom texter och bilder vill lyfta fram stadens specifika kvalitéer.Men vad gömmer sig i skuggsidan av platsmarknadsföringen? Och vidare vad blir effekterna av de bilder man visar upp av staden?Många kritiska forskare menar att risken är att befolkningen i staden inte känner igen bilden av sin stad och då känner sig åsidosatta och platsmarknadsföringen förlorar då sin styrka. Därför blir också intern platsmarknadsföring oerhört viktigt för att vinna legitimitet hos befolkningen.I min undersökning har jag gjort en djupstudie av Karlstad relativt nya platsvarumärke °Karlstad med tillhörande platsvarumärkesmaterial. Genom analyser av materialets texter och bilder och med kompletterande intervjuer med nyckelpersoner som arbetar med marknadsföringen, har jag dessutom fått ett djupare perspektiv och förståelse för platsvarumärkets syfte. Genom analyser har jag kunnat urskilja teman och diskurser som återkommer i materialet.Det finns inga faktiska siffror på hur mycket platsmarknadsföringen ger en stad eller om det i huvud taget ger en ekonomisk vinning för staden. Det som marknadsföringen däremot ger om man lyckas i sin marknadsföring, är igenkännande och vidare ett stark platsvarumärke som blir igenkänt nationellt och kanske till och med internationellt. Om man dessutom har starka värden, som Karlstad faktiskt har lyckats skapa och som stark förknippas med platsen, ger det också bredare djupverkningar och igenkännande på marknaden. På lång sikt kan det ge starkt underlag för att locka till sig besöksnäring, befolkning och företag. / Place marketing is a growing phenomenon both internationally and in Sweden, where it is alleged that "cities are competing against other cities' of the tourism industry, new businesses and population. To place market the specific values of the city, by packaging and "sell" an idea of the city, has become more of a rule than an exception, where they want to highlight the specific qualities of the city through texts and images.But what hides in the shadow-side of the place marketing? And what will the actual effects be of the photos used to showcase the city?Many critical scholars believe that a risk is that the population of the city does not recognize the image of their own town and may feel neglected leading to the marketing losing its power. Hence the importance of internal site marketing as it is extremely important to win legitimacy among the population.In my research I have done in-depth study of Karlstads relatively new place brand °Karlstad with related brand materials. Through analysis of the texts and pictures from the material with additional interviews with key figures working with the marketing in Karlstad municipality, I have also gained a deeper perspective and understanding of the purpose of the subject of place marketing. Through analysis, I have been able to discern themes and discourses that recur in the material.There are no actual numbers or statistics on the gain of place marketing for a town in financial or other values. Instead, what it does give is recognition, and if done properly, a strong brand that can be recognized by citizens of Sweden and even internationally. If there are other strong and important values that can be associated with the town it will give wider effects of depth in the long perspective, creating a possibility to attract tourists, inhabitants and companies.

This thesis adopts a Cultural Industries framework to examine how Queensland's arts council network has, through the provision of arts products and services, contributed to the vitality, health and sustainability of Queensland's regional communities. It charts the history of the network, its configuration and impact since 1961, with particular focus on the years 2001 - 2004, envisages future trends, and provides an analysis of key issues which may be used to guide future policies and programs. Analysis is guided by a Cultural Industries understanding of the arts embedded in everyday life, and views the arts as a range of activities which, by virtue of their aesthetic and symbolic dimensions, enhance human existence through their impact on both the quality and style of human life. Benefits include enhanced leisure and entertainment options, and educational, social, health, personal growth, and economic outcomes, and other indirect benefits which enrich environment and lifestyle. Queensland Arts Council (QAC) and its network of branches has been a dominant factor in the evolution of Queensland's cultural environment since the middle of the 20th century. Across the state, branches became the public face of the arts, drove cultural agendas, initiated and managed activities, advised governments, wrote cultural policies, lobbied, raised funds and laboured to realise cultural facilities and infrastructure. In the early years of the 21st century, QAC operates within a complex, competitive and rapidly changing environment in which orthodox views of development, oriented in terms of a left / right, or bottom up / top down dichotomy, are breaking down, and new convergent models emerge. These new models recognise synergies between artistic, social, economic and political agendas, and unite and energise them in the realm of civil society. QAC is responding by refocusing policies and programs to embrace these new models and by developing new modes of community engagement and arts facilitation. In 1999, a major restructure of the arts council network saw suffragan branches become autonomous Local Arts Councils (LACs), analogous to local Cultural Industry support organisations. The resulting network of affiliated LACs provides a potentially highly effective mechanism for the delivery of arts related products and services, the decentralisation of cultural production, and the nurturing across the state of Creative Community Cultures which equip communities, more than any other single asset, to survive and prosper through an era of unsettling and relentless change. Historical, demographic, behavioural (participation), and attitudinal data are combined to provide a picture of arts councils in seven case study sites, and across the network. Typical arts council members are characterised as omnivorous cultural consumers and members of a knowledge class, and the leadership of dedicated community minded people is identified as the single most critical factor determining the extent of an LAC's activities and its impact on community. Analysis of key issues leads to formulation of eight observations, discussed with reference to QAC and LACs, which might guide navigation in the regional arts field. These observations are then reformulated as Eight Principles Of Effective Regional Arts Facilitation, which provide a framework against which we might evaluate arts policy and practice.

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Les mutations récentes du capitalisme, où la « connaissance » tend à remplacer les ressources naturelles et le travail physique comme outils de croissance économique, transforment en profondeur les villes contemporaines. Dans ce contexte, les villes dites « post-fordistes » adaptent leurs structures productives, spatiales et socio-organisationnelles aux exigences de la nouvelle économie. L'une des manifestations les plus claires de ces mutations réside dans la multiplication de grands projets développés au cœur des villes : « Districts Technologiques », « Districts de l'Innovation », « Cités du Design », « Cités du Multimédia », « Quartier des Sciences », « Quartiers de la Création ou de l'Innovation » etc. Pour comprendre ce phénomène nous avons réalisé une analyse comparative de quatre projets mis en œuvre dans trois villes : Barcelone (22@barcelona), Buenos Aires (Distrito Tecnológico ; Distrito de Diseño) et Grenoble (projet GIANT /Presqu'île). A travers cette étude nous avons cherché à répondre à deux questions fondamentales. Ces projets préfigurent-ils l'émergence d'un nouveau « Modèle Territorial de l'Innovation » (MTI), le modèle des « Systèmes Urbains Cognitifs » (SUC) ? Dans quelle mesure les caractéristiques distinctives des SUC font de ces sites des supports privilégiés de production et de diffusion d'innovations ? / Over the last decade, cities have been adjusting their production, spatial and socio-organisational structures to the requirements of the new economy. There has been a plethora of “technology districts”, “creative clusters and cyberdistricts” – all built on the same type of model, that of “Urban Cognitive Systems” (UCS). The assumption behind these UCSs involves creating a new theoretical framework and then testing out the ability of UCSs to establish themselves as an ideal way for localities to produce and add value to the process of innovation. This empirical work involves comparative analysis of four UCSs established in three cities, Barcelona (22@Barcelona), Buenos Aires (Distrito Tecnológico ; Distrito de Diseño) and Grenoble (GIANT / Presqu'île scientifique).