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This research explores the agency and positioning of cultural workers in the restructuring of contemporary cities. This positioning is ambiguous. Cultural workers often lead precarious professional lives, yet their significant symbolic and cultural capital is widely mobilised in the service of neoliberal urban restructuring, including ‘creative city’ flagship developments and gentrification. But cultural workers’ actual agency, their reactions to urban processes that exploit their presence, and their relations to other urban social groups, are poorly understood and hard to decipher. This thesis addresses these issues through three articles. Paper I examines a process of artist-led gentrification ongoing in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. It shows that artists, gallerists and other members of the local art scene contribute to sustaining gentrification through their everyday practices and discourses. The gentrification frontier is constructed on an everyday level as a transitional space and time in the scene members’ lives. Gentrification is de-politicised by discursively underplaying its conflictual components of class and racial struggle. Forms of resistance to gentrification amongst scene members are found, but they appear to be sector-specific and exclusive. Finally, scene members tend to fail at establishing meaningful relationships with long-time residents. Paper II brings the perspectives of long-time residents in Bushwick to the forefront. Examination of the emotional and affectual components of displacement reveals that these aspects are as important as material re-location to understanding displacement and gentrification. The encounter with newcomers’ bodies in neighbourhood spaces triggers a deep sense of displacement for long-time residents, evoking deep-rooted structural inequalities of which gentrification is one spatial expression. Paper III examines the case of Macao, a collective mobilisation of cultural workers in Milan, Italy. There, cultural workers have mobilised against neoliberal urbanism, top-down gentrification, corruption, growing labour precarity and other regressive urban and social issues. The paper considers the distinctive resources, aesthetic tactics and inaugurative practices mobilised and enacted in the urban space by Macao and it argues that by deploying their cultural and symbolic capital, cultural workers can reframe the relations between bodies, space and time, and hence challenge power structures. Cultural workers might not have the power to determine the structural boundaries and hierarchies that organize urban society, including their own positioning in it. Nonetheless, through their actions and discourses and subjectification processes, they can reinforce or challenge those borders.

This thesis describes and analyses how the school sector in sparsely populated municipalities in northern Sweden has developed with emphasis on spatial dimensions and in relation to demographic change and political reforms during the last 20 years. In paper I primary schools were studied in a number of small municipalities in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The aim of the study was to investigate how the spatial structure of schools has changed, what strategies the municipalities have developed to adapt their schools to changing conditions and what constraints there are to apply the strategies. To answer these questions, semi-structured interviews with municipal representatives were conducted. In paper II, the upper secondary school system was studied. The aim of the paper was to analyse the combined consequences of the school reforms, demographic development and competition on the ability of small municipalities to provide upper secondary schools during the period 1997 to 2015 in the four northernmost counties of Sweden. The study was based on data from the database SIRIS at the Swedish National Agency for Education and has a descriptive approach. The spatial structure of school organizations under study has undergone substantial changes during the recent decades, with closures and mergers among primary schools and an expansion of upper secondary schools. In recent years, the size of the young cohorts have decreased, which overall has led to increasing pressures to close primary schools and has created a detrimental competition between upper secondary schools. The large distances and the already small and declining number of pupils have had major effects on the ability to offer a good range and quality in the supply and availability of education. According to representatives from all the studied municipalities, the ambition is to prioritize the primary schools in the municipal centre and have as few small village schools as possible, taking into consideration quality of education, per capita costs, distances, and how scattered the pupils are within the municipalities. Independent schools and their increasingly larger role have attracted a great deal of attention in media, but this is a change that has mainly occurred in municipalities with large populations and their presence in the studied municipalities is very small both at the primary and upper secondary level.

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I strävan efter lösningar på den globala uppvärmningen har transportsektorn och dess utsläpp identifierats som ett stort hot mot de globala målen som Agenda 2030. Transportsektorn har länge varit dominerad av fordon drivna med fossilbränslen som huvudfokus, men nu skiftar fokuset till cykel som ett transportsätt. Detta ställer frågan vad kan göras för att utveckla cykelns roll i samhället och vad görs. Denna studie har undersökt hur samarbetet mellan kommuner, regioner och regeringen sker i cykelplaneringen. Samt vilka olika målsättningar, utmaningar och förhållningssätt man har till cykelns roll i samhället. Det undersöktes med hjälp av en litteraturstudie där Ystads kommun, Region Skånes och den nationella cykelstrategin analyserades genom kodning av nyckeldokument. Resultatet visar att fortsatt samarbete är av stor vikt, cykelplaneringen behöver befästas inom planorganen som en institutionell praktik fortsatt och fördjupat. Aktörerna behöver fortsätta sitt arbete för att harmonisera olika system med varandra. / In the search for solutions to combat global warming the transport sector and its emissions have been identified as a big threat to the global goals such as Agenda 2030. The transport sector has for a long time been dominated by motor vehicles as its main focus, but now the focus shifts towards the bicycle. The present paper asks what can be done to develop the role of the bicycle in the society and what is being done. This study has examined how the collaboration between municipalities, regional governments and the state is done when the bicycle is in focus. What goals, challenges and approaches that are present towards the bicycles roll in society. This was examined with a literature study of Ystads municipality, Region Skåne´s, and the national bicycle strategy which was coded. The result showed that a continuation of the existing collaboration is of great value, bicycle planning needs to be entrenched as an institutional practice. The actors needs to continue their work to harmonize different systems with each other.

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Denna rapport syftar till att ta reda på hur handelssjöfarten drabbats ekonomiskt och humanitärt av piratverksamheten utanför Afrikas Horn, vilka insatser och åtgärder som vidtagits i bekämpandet av piraterna och hur utfallet av dessa åtgärder varit samt även ge en inblick i bakgrunden till varför piratverksamheten uppstått just i detta område.   Genom litteraturstudier och genom att jämföra och sammanställa data från olika rapporter från tidsintervallet 2010-2016 visas utvecklingen för de ekonomiska och humanitära konsekvenserna av piratattackerna.   Bilden som framkommer är att antalet piratattacker i området minskat mycket kraftigt sedan 2010 och att de olika åtgärder som vidtagits således gett god effekt. Det framkommer dock att de flesta insatserna och åtgärderna främst varit av repressiv typ och mindre av förebyggande typ och att det krävs mer av den senare typen för att förhindra att piratattackerna tar fart igen.

Förtätning är idag ett vanligt förfarande i samhällsbyggandet och sker runt om i hela världen. Det lyfts ofta fram som ett hållbart sätt för en stad att växa, men det finns nackdelar och möts ofta av motstånd från boende i området. När en ort växer och förtätas med en ny typ av bebyggelse kan det förändra identiteten, gemenskapen och känslan av en ort, vilket kan skapa starka känslor. Hur ställer sig de tre intressenterna; (1) boende, (2) kommun och (3) byggsektorn till förtätningen och tillväxten? Vilka likheter och olikheter finns det i deras inställning? Vart är de överens och var krockar de? För att undersöka detta har en fallstudie utformats på Rydebäck, för att belysa de olika intressenternas relation till varandra och deras intresse i utbyggnaden av orten. Rydebäck är en tätort med 6000 invånare i Helsingborgs kommun. Det har utförts en kvalitativ intervjustudie med respondenter från vardera grupp intressenter. Respondenterna sinsemellan visade överlag god förståelse för varandras intressen. De boende var de som framförde flest känsloargument, vilken inte är förvånande, då de är mer personligt engagerade i orten än respondenterna från kommun och byggsektorn. Det framgick att Rydebäck undergått en förändring i identitet, gemenskap och gestaltning när det förändrats från ett typiskt villa- och radhusområde till ett område med flerbostadshus. Men exakt vad som föranledde förändringen är inte helt tydligt. / Densification is today common practice within urban development around the world. The motive behind this is often that it is a sustainable way for cities to grow. However, there are downsides and it is often met with resistance from the local community. When a district is growing through densification with a different type of building that does not already exist in that area, the feeling of community and place identity may be at stake, which can cause strong emotions among the residents. What opinion do the three stakeholders; (1) residents, (2) municipality and (3) construction companies have when it comes to densification and growth? Are there any differences to their perception or are they aligned? A qualitative case study was formed around Rydebäck to identify their relations and interests. Rydebäck is a suburban area with approximately 6000 inhabitants in the Helsingborg municipality. The interviews were held with respondents from each group. The findings show that the respondents had an understanding for each other's interests. The residents had arguments largely based on emotions, which was not too surprising due to them having a more personal connection to Rydebäck than the construction companies and the municipality. It became clear that the view was that Rydebacks place identity had been subject to change in the aftermath of the integration of multi-family homes. However it is not clear if it is caused by the building of multi-family homes in an area otherwise dominated by single-family homes or by the population increase in general.

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