This thesis examines perceptions of sustainability and sustainable urban development among actors involved in the project of rebuilding Slussen in central Stockholm. Views on the suggested new traffic solution and what would make a sustainable solution, the concepts of sustainability and sustainable urban development and how these concepts are interpreted and applied as policy, are especially investigated. A semi-structured qualitative interview study has been carried out and the respondents include city officials, politicians, representatives of interest groups, consultants and researchers. Stockholm, European Green Capital in 2010, sets high goals for sustainability. As concept, sustainability is also frequently used in much of the city´s planning material such as the budget, environmental programme and urban development documents. However, it has not been included in the goals of the Slussen project. Even though, interviewees representing the city view the project as a sustainability project whereas other respondents clearly question this view. The study suggests that a determining factor for this division is how the sustainability concept is defined (or not), also how car traffic is viewed in urban sustainable development. The thesis shows that instead of planning for sustainable transportation, traditional business-as-usual traffic planning has dominated the Slussen project. The main reasons are that the new traffic solution, although including new walking and cycling bridges as well as a new bus terminal, includes planning for increased car traffic, an eight lane bridge to provide for it and a high degree of separation instead of integration of transport modes. Many of the interviewees also perceive of the suggested new main bridge as a motorway and the walking bridge as being both socially and culturally unsustainable in its long and narrow design. The new traffic solution in itself is viewed as unsustainable since it would bring about the abandonment of a more than 300 year old tradition of double and equal bridges at Slussen. Finally, the study suggests that the planned new traffic solution would have both looked different and been perceived of as more sustainable if sustainability had been included in the project goals. However, this would only have been the case if the concept was properly defined and implemented.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-152638 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Bjarnestam, Jesper |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsala : Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Licentiate thesis, monograph, info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Forskarskolan i geografi |
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