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Abstract
This paper explores challenges and possibilities for integrating goals of long-term sustainable development into urban planning practice, with a specific focus on local institutional conditions for sustainability transitions. The analysis is based on a qualitative single case study of a large urban development process: the development of a new city district in Hyllie in the city of Malmö, Sweden. Hyllie was branded as a flagship project for sustainable urban development, with particularly high ambitions on climate neutrality and sustainable energy consumption. Several innovative elements were initiated in the development process, for instance the “climate contract” between the municipality and large energy companies. In the paper, this climate contract is discussed as an initiative with a promising potential for sustainability transitions. In practice, however, the outcome of the development in Hyllie in terms of sustainable development is ambiguous, since the district is also framed around luxury shopping, entertainment, and an ambition to attract visitors from a long distance. The Hyllie development illustrates pre-requisites for work on sustainable development in a decentralized and market-oriented planning context. Theoretically, the analysis is inspired by the multi-level perspective (MLP) and institutional theory. The results illustrate how the development process was shaped by a complex interplay between actors with differing agendas and targets at different stages in the process. These results are applied in a general discussion of challenges and possibilities for urban planning to contribute substantially to a transition to long-term sustainable development. Overall, the analysis demonstrates the importance of considering specific local institutional conditions in strategic work for long-term sustainability.
Highlights
Current research on sustainability transitions (ST) is being driven by the increasing urgency of tackling challenges relating to climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion, where neither traditional top-down planning nor incrementalism has proven capable of enabling the structural change necessary to pull back from unsustainable paths [1]
We examine conditions to work for sustainability transitions in an urban planning context
This case study of Hyllie provides a rich illustration of the pre-requisites for working with sustainable development targets in a decentralized, market-oriented land use planning context, where different actors and departments within the municipality organization have different roles, perspectives, priorities and power resources
Summary
Current research on sustainability transitions (ST) is being driven by the increasing urgency of tackling challenges relating to climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion, where neither traditional top-down planning nor incrementalism has proven capable of enabling the structural change necessary to pull back from unsustainable paths [1]. Urban planning is widely understood as an important arena for realizing goals of long-term sustainability [2,3,4,5,6] It has not yet developed into a major theme in the ST research field, the number of studies on urban planning applying a ST framework is growing rapidly [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. These previous studies indicate the importance of exploring specific, context-dependent aspects of transition processes, which involves in-depth examination of specific places, actors, and other socio-cultural dimensions. They envisioned developing Hyllie into a place for entertainment, shopping, and other activities, and eventually the city council started a planning process that built on these ideas, as further illustrated in the section ‘Regime level’ below
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