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Medborgardialogernas roll i samhället och dess planering : En analys av medborgardialogsprocesser i två kommuner

The aim of this study was to examine what role citizen dialogs have in the society and its planning of urban development. Also, what relation citizen dialogs have to social sustainability. Furthermore, find out how two municipalities, Boden and Umeå, with different circumstances work with citizen dialogs. This has been done through the studying of documents from the municipalities. The document studies presented several concepts and methods to work with citizen dialogs and stated that they are of importance for the municipalities. One document, “Så star det till!” is a compilation of an extensive work with citizen dialogs in Umeå municipality. Boden municipality presented on their social media several examples of citizen dialogs. That presentation in itself is a way of communicating and in a sense a dialog with the citizens. To find this a few keywords were used when studying the documents. Three semi-structured interviews were performed with people working at the municipalities. The results from the interviews were processed through a coding scheme and finally analyzed with the help of Fungs (2006) Democracy cube.   The interviews showed that the municipalities work alike in many ways and highly value citizen dialogs. The municipalities try out different methods of citizen dialogs and perform them in the preliminary stages of the planning processes. They also aim for the comments, wishes, and needs the citizens voices to have an actual impact on the result of the plans they have taken part in, which contributes to social sustainability. The role of citizen dialogs in the planning process are to some extent dictated in a law but not particularly in detail. Some argue that citizen dialogs give the citizen false power (citizens power which is essential in increasing social sustainability), that they in fact do not have a say in the planning processes. In some cases where the dialogs fail, they instead lead to a decrease in trust for the municipalities and their planners. Another argument is that the citizens should trust the representative democracy.   The whole study also shows that citizen dialogs are complex and difficult to adapt and to then include everyone since there is a lot of variation in the personalities and circumstances among the citizens. But in conclusion the citizen dialogs have a future where they seem to get a bigger roll with new methods and impact the social sustainability, majority in a sense of giving the citizens more power to influence their home and surroundings.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-209694
Date January 2023
CreatorsEriksson, Sandra
PublisherUmeå universitet, Institutionen för geografi
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageSwedish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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