Cities work to create attractive environments to increase population growth. Attracting people to a place is only the beginning, however, the hard part is getting the people to see the city as an attractive place, to live throughout their lives. This study has investigated how the concept of attractiveness is applied to different age groups in urban planning, and how young adults, families with children and pensioners, interpret the concept of attractiveness. The focus of this study is on the city of Härnösand. To investigate this, interviews were conducted with a planning coordinator and a business developer at Härnösand municipality, as well as with two people from each age group from Härnösand's population. A total of eight interviews have been conducted. The results showed that there are differences and similarities between how people in different life stages interpret what is attractive in a city. The pensioners considered culture to be one of the most attractive things in Härnösand, while the other respondents did not place much value on it. All age groups found it attractive that Härnösand is a small town, which means that it is close to everything. All respondents also agreed that the sea and nature in Härnösand create attractiveness, and that areas with very hard surfaces, such as industrial areas, are not seen as attractive. The young adults found indoor activities attractive, while families with children placed more importance on outdoor activities. The retirees did not emphasize the range of activities as an attractive attribute. Safety was something that all age groups believed created attractiveness in a place, but the pensioners were the group that valued safety the most and the young adults valued safety the least. The result showed that the municipality of Härnösand thinks it is important to get the opinions of the citizens in order to create environments that suit everyone, which in the long run can have a positive effect on population development. The study indicates that Härnösand municipality has ambitions to create attractive environments for different age groups. It shows an example of work with a planning program for an area called Skeppsbron in Härnösand where the municipality used the 8 80 method in the citizen dialogue to try to create an equally attractive place for all ages. The method assumes that if a city is as attractive to an 8-year-old as to an 80-year-old, then it is equally attractive to everyone in a city. However, it emerged that there may be challenges in gathering opinions from a wide range of citizens. The results of this survey showed that all respondents actively chose not to participate in citizen dialogues due to lack of time and lack of interest, which creates difficulties for the municipality of Härnösand to create attractiveness for everyone. This study therefore concludes that Härnösand may have to change its citizen dialogues in some way in order to gather more people's opinions. By doing this, the quality of community planning can be improved and Härnösand can be developed into an even more attractive place for more people in different life stages, which in turn could perhaps have a positive effect on population development.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-210839 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Bohlin, Tilda |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för geografi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| 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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