As the world urbanizes, many rural areas are facing continued depopulation. Despite these shrinking trends there remains a growth-paradigm within planning. This warrants investigating how to plan for shrinkage, and the difficult decisions that follow, such as dismantlement or restructuring of services. The aim of this thesis is to investigate experiences of planners working with depopulation, understanding the role of dialogue in rural shrinking municipalities in Sweden. The study researches the implications of rural shrinkage on participatory approaches to planning, and how citizen dialogue for shrinkage can be applied in a rural context. Interviews were conducted with eight planners in rural Swedish municipalities. These revealed themes of a connected society, the role of citizen engagement and community, importance of clarity and early involvement in dialogues on sensitive issues and objective of information exchange in dialogues, and lastly the complexity of shrinkage characterised by a persisting growth-focus. This thesis suggests that shrinking rural municipalities in Sweden should take a more accepting view on shrinkage. They should aim for continuous, place-based and open citizen dialogues and close cooperation with community groups and networks in planning. The familiar nature of dialogues should be utilized, whilst it should be considered and counteracted that some groups may be excluded in these informal settings. Promoting co-production and shared responsibility of issues, they should aim to facilitate and harness the power and drive of the community whilst navigating complex social relationships.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-205243 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Ebner, Hanna |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Tema teknik och social förändring |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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