Policy arrangements Göteborg

Björn Malbert

Paper made available to the COST C11 Working party.

 Click button to return to COST C11 - WG1B home page

Policy arrangements
Discussion	Concept	Challenges
Cases		Goteborg	Marseille	Munich	Sheffield	Utrecht	Warsaw

Policy arrangements Göteborg, Sweden

The most influential discours(es) in relation to green structure planning is / are:

Background

Göteborg City was established in 1621 and was for a long time the only port to the sea on the Swedish west coast. The coast south of the city was at that time belonging to Denmark, and the coast north of the city to Norway. The harbour, shipping and trade became the natural sources for early urban development. The city is located at the mouth of the Göta River surrounded by mountains, forests and river valleys to the north, east and south and the sea to the west. Göteborg was a rather small town until the end of the 19th century when the process of industrialisation emerged and later made Göteborg the second largest city of the country and the most important industrial city. The city started to grow along the river valleys. This development culminated in the 1960s when Goteborg was an important harbour, shipyard and industry centre of Scandinavia (e.g. Volvo and SKF). The need for labour housing and new industrial sites made the city expand to the neighbouring former agricultural and hilly landscape. In order to manage this the city bought a lot of farmland in surrounding municipalities. The city is characterised by a large urban landscape only partly densely built up. The harbour and the river is still the core of the city. In the ongoing transformation from industry to knowledge-based business the former industrial and shipyard sites with very central location are redeveloped for new purposes. Due to offensive public landowning policy in the 1960s the city today controls large parts of the urban landscape including brown fields, cultural heritage, recreation areas, forests and building reserves. This is a powerful position when it comes to negotiations and partnership agreements with private sector interests.

Green Planning

The Göteborg structure plan of 1993 followed by the plan of 1999, include a green plan, or green structure plan, recognising the green assets and values concerning ecology, recreation and leisure-time activities, natural and cultural heritage, parks and landscape images of the whole municipal land and water area. The green plan has a strong background in an earlier natural and cultural preservation programme set up by an informal sector-crossing task group representing the offices of Urban Planning, Real Estate, Park and Leisure-time, Environment and Gothenburg Museum. This group had an important role as a coordinating and information-distributing actor within the municipal administrative system concerning green issues. It is today a more formalised body headed by the newly established Park and Nature administration with responsibility for the development and maintenance all public green resources of the city. The Real Estate office is still a strong player as responsible for the landownership of the city. Over the years this office has developed some interesting tools connected to contracts with developers and farmers that will be further discussed below.

To summarise, the discourses on green planning in Göteborg is based on the following main points of departure:

- Public ownership and control of land resources.

- Long tradition of knowledge-based green planning at the comprehensive level.

- Partnerships between the city and the private sector, where the city have a relatively strong position due to public landownership and municipal planning monopoly as stated in the Swedish Building and Planning Act.

Furthermore, the Swedish culture traditionally contains strong individual relations to the natural landscape. This means that, even if Göteborg is a relatively green and sparsely built up city, there are strong reactions among the citizens against developments that are seen as threats to urban green qualities. That is why the large central park, Slottsskogen, in reality is well protected, although without any legal means. Neither developers nor politicians would think of meeting the public opinion that any building proposal in Slottskogen ("the castle forest") would create among the citizens. Normally developments all over the city that have negative impact on green resources face strong opposition of those who feel influenced by the project. In the planning process the citizens have the formal right to make complains and the city is obliged to respond and comment on such reactions according to the planning legislation. This often results in long-lasting disputes and sometimes in changed plans or unsolved problems (so called deadlocks). This is also why communication with diverse stakeholders and users of green space in early stages of planning processes is recognised as essential by planners of the city. While ecological and cultural values are rather well investigated and described in previous planning documents, the social aspects and local user knowledge is currently in focus for green planning activities.

Discourses

The over-all planning policy of the city is densification of the already built up areas in order to take advantage of already made investments in infrastructure and public transportation systems. This means development of un-built areas in established urban districts where the local use and appreciation of green resources is unknown to the urban planners and sometimes not even recognised and expressed in the green plan. At the urban fringe vast areas of former farmland now owned by the city has a significant value as a cultural heritage and is a much appreciated landscape for recreation as well as scientific studies. Here the maintenance, keeping the landscape open and accessible, is a challenge to the municipal economy.

The problems mentioned are approached in innovative ways in some cases studied in the EU research project "Communicating Urban Growth and Green" (Greenscom). The Uggledal-case concerns densification in an area south of the city. The planner in charge wanted to grasp local knowledge before designing a new housing area in order to fulfil the high ambitions of environmental concern as expressed in the district plan (detailed part of the Göteborg Structure Plan) as well as trying to avoid the in this district normally occurring NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) reactions. She invited to voluntary participation in local groups, one for women, one for elderly people and one for school children. These groups had the opportunity to discuss and influence the design of the development project in a very early stage of the planning process. Especially the women group became very engaged and met at least 10 times during the whole process. Both the planner and the participants experienced a fruitful learning process. One core condition was the municipal land ownership and the purchase contract between the Real Estate office and the developer. The price of the land was not connected to the size of the site but the number of flats determined in the final detailed plan. This meant that there was a "space of action" for influence by the local groups. They could reject some of the proposed buildings without economic losses to the developer. The plan passed the formal procedure of decision-making without serious complains from the stakeholders and neighbours concerned.

The Lärje river-case is about maintenance of the cultural landscape at the urban fringe north of the city. This land was originally bought by the city for urban extension that only partly has occurred. Here the Real Estate office has made leasing contracts with farmers who maintain the landscape through keeping grazing animals. The city kept the ownership of the land. The original small and middle-sized farms were divided into some small units for people keeping private horses and a few larger units where keeping grazing animals are obliged. While private horse farms close to the city have great interest to well-off urban households the larger grazing farms are difficult to make profitable for interested farmers. Hence the Real Estate office made up differentiated lease contracts. The smaller horse farms were more expensive to rent than the larger grazing farms. In this way keeping grazing animals became economically possible for the farmers and the maintenance of the cultural landscape became affordable to the city following the leasing contracts that also stipulated keeping the area accessible to the public.

The discourses in key words:

Policies of the city:

ß Urban growth inside already built up urban districts,

ß Recognition of the multi-functional urban green structure,

ß Land ownership and municipal planning as development tools,

ß Partnerships with the private sector.

Innovative initiatives of officials, accepted and confirmed by public sector boards:

ß Using purchase and leasing contracts as tools in partnership projects,

ß Involving and listen to local people in early stages of the design process,

ß Shaping "space of action", that is making participation meaningful.

Citizen reactions:

ß High appreciation of urban green resources among citizens and local movements (NGOs),

ß Protests against any urban development project that is seen as a threat to urban green qualities, sometimes as NIMBY reactions and sometimes as valuable contributions identifying and protecting urban green qualities not recognised in the over-all green planning process. (Local knowledge as complement to expert knowledge.)

Argumentation: The driving force is the need for broader communication in the planning process in order to make possible the implementation and the positive adjustment of the over-all development policies of the city at the local level. This is an adaptation to the relatively strong power of stakeholders and citizens provided in the current planning legislation as well as a necessity in a partnership strategy. The innovative tools developed in the cases studied open for mutual learning as "space of action" is shaped and makes participation meaningful to the local actors.

What actor (coalitions), rules of the game, tools, and resources go along with this / these discourses?

Actors:

Different departments of the City of Göteborg,

Devoted officials at the Town Planning office, the Real Estate office and other offices of the city administration,

Developers,

Local farmers and NGOs (Lärje River case),

Local groups of women, elderly and children (Uggledal case),

The politicians of the city adopting the over-all policies and accepting the innovative initiatives in the cases studied.

Rules of the game:

Openings for local actions within the frames of the over-all planning strategies,

Involvement of locals and experts in early stages of planning processes,

Process facilitation.

Resources:

Public land ownership,

Devoted officials wishing to learn and improve,

Interested citizens given some meaningful agency in participative initiatives,

An over-all development strategy recognising urban qualities and giving frames as well as "space of action" for local adaptation.