Involving Tenants in Open Space Management: Experiences from Swedish Rental Housing Areas

Abstract

In Sweden, tenant involvement in open space management has been acknowledged as having great potential to promote amenities and social cohesion in urban neighborhoods. However, no attempts have been made to investigate how common these initiatives are, where they occur, and which forms they take. Therefore, a survey was carried out, encompassing telephone interviews with housing company staff and tenants active in involvement processes in the city of Göteborg, Sweden, covering three-fourths of the city's rental housing stock. Involvement processes were categorized into six different types, based on their level of control and their ranges of management responsibilities. Twenty-eight formalized involvement processes were identified, all occurring in larger public housing companies. A comparative analysis reveals a great variety in physical, demographic, and organizational preconditions, suggesting that the housing company's local area staff have a crucial role to play in the initiation and operation of involvement processes.