In this dissertation constructions of contemporary urban ideals are in focus, starting from the understanding that they are constructed in relation to both an idea of an urban renaissance and one ofa dissolving, or sprawling, city. The aim of the dissertation is to investigate and analyse how the city and the urban are discursively constructed in contemporary Swedish urban planning discussion. This is done by analysing articles from the Swedish Journal of Planning (Plan) and publications from the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (Boverket) and the Urban Environment Council (Stadsmiljörådet). The main research topics are: How is the city and its history constructed? What norms are constructed about the city and the urban? How is planning and the role of the planner constructed, and what kind of knowledge and practices are emphasised? Methodologically, the dissertation is inspired by social constructivist methods, and mainly discourse theory. Applying this to the urban context means understanding urbanity and cities as constantly constructed and reconstructed discursively, even if both appear to be defined, absolute and recognisable. The analysis investigates these appearances and the meanings they are given – in this case in an urban planning context.  The analysis shows that history plays an important part in both the construction of ideals and problems. Both contemporary planning and the urban ideals are conceptualised in the light of a modernist planning era, which is emphasised as the period when the “real” city was dissolved or even destroyed. An “original”, pre-modern city is constructed and guarded as the norm, and the categorisation of places appear as important. Concepts both open and defined appear as central, such as diversity, variation, identity and urbanity. The planning practice that supposedly creates the good city is ideally a sensitive and emotional practice and practitioner, in line with communicative planning theory. Binary conceptual couples structure the discourse to a high degree, resulting in polarisations such as compact/sparse, city/countryside or inner city/suburb. The problematic or contradictory, such as the suburb, is marked off from the “real” city, and an inside and outside of the good city is created. The importance of a holistic and comprehensive planning perspective is emphasized, but at the same time the urban ideal that comes out appear as a strongly normative outlook from the traditional inner city. An inner city “we” is constructed, and the suburb, the suburban and its inhabitants are seen as an Other.  The dissertation also discusses some openings and contrary voices in the discourse and in other urban research indicative of an attempt to move beyond the polarisations. By questioning hierarchies and polarisations, and opening up for influence from outside of the discourse, concepts such as diversity and urbanity could be given alternative meanings instead of being used to mourn the loss of a “real”, original city or urban public space. / <p>QC 20130204</p>

In this dissertation constructions of contemporary urban ideals are in focus, starting from the understanding that they are constructed in relation to both an idea of an urban renaissance and one ofa dissolving, or sprawling, city. The aim of the dissertation is to investigate and analyse how the city and the urban are discursively constructed in contemporary Swedish urban planning discussion. This is done by analysing articles from the Swedish Journal of Planning (Plan) and publications from the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (Boverket) and the Urban Environment Council (Stadsmiljörådet). The main research topics are: How is the city and its history constructed? What norms are constructed about the city and the urban? How is planning and the role of the planner constructed, and what kind of knowledge and practices are emphasised? Methodologically, the dissertation is inspired by social constructivist methods, and mainly discourse theory. Applying this to the urban context means understanding urbanity and cities as constantly constructed and reconstructed discursively, even if both appear to be defined, absolute and recognisable. The analysis investigates these appearances and the meanings they are given – in this case in an urban planning context.  The analysis shows that history plays an important part in both the construction of ideals and problems. Both contemporary planning and the urban ideals are conceptualised in the light of a modernist planning era, which is emphasised as the period when the “real” city was dissolved or even destroyed. An “original”, pre-modern city is constructed and guarded as the norm, and the categorisation of places appear as important. Concepts both open and defined appear as central, such as diversity, variation, identity and urbanity. The planning practice that supposedly creates the good city is ideally a sensitive and emotional practice and practitioner, in line with communicative planning theory. Binary conceptual couples structure the discourse to a high degree, resulting in polarisations such as compact/sparse, city/countryside or inner city/suburb. The problematic or contradictory, such as the suburb, is marked off from the “real” city, and an inside and outside of the good city is created. The importance of a holistic and comprehensive planning perspective is emphasized, but at the same time the urban ideal that comes out appear as a strongly normative outlook from the traditional inner city. An inner city “we” is constructed, and the suburb, the suburban and its inhabitants are seen as an Other.  The dissertation also discusses some openings and contrary voices in the discourse and in other urban research indicative of an attempt to move beyond the polarisations. By questioning hierarchies and polarisations, and opening up for influence from outside of the discourse, concepts such as diversity and urbanity could be given alternative meanings instead of being used to mourn the loss of a “real”, original city or urban public space.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the term attractiveness is interpreted in Swedish contemporary urban planning. The focus is to analyse how the term is discursively constructed and by this highlight the conceptions that exist around what makes a city attractive. We want to emphasize the importance of a deeper understanding of how attractiveness is used in urban planning and how the term is a part of the development of our cities. Given the use of attractiveness as a part of visionary goals for Malmö´s and other Swedish cities future development, our intention, therefore, is to enhance the understanding of what the use of attractiveness means in respect of the creation and construction of power relations in time and place. The framework of our analysis is based on the discourse theory approach and used as a way of understanding how urban ideals is discursively constructed. This perspective stresses the production of city and place as a planning process. The meaning of attractive places is historically and contextually dependent and constantly constructed and reconstructed through ideals. We have also used the concept of discourse theory as a tool for analysing our empirical material and to detect which values are combined with the term attractiveness. The study is mostly based on planning-documents and interviews with planners and architects located in the city of Malmö. The paper demonstrates that the term attractiveness is used as a tool for achieving the vision of sustainable development but emphasizes that there is a problem implementing the visionary goal of attractiveness on a practice level. The use of attractiveness within planning practice creates both complications and misunderstandings among planners. The meaning of the concept is presented with both a competitive approach and approaches towards social benefits. Attractiveness tends to contain everything and nothing, which demonstrates the gap between vision and reality in urban planning.