Visioning and social sustainability versus property: The case of Norra Sorgenfri, Malmö

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article addresses the simple but pertinent question of why ambitious urban planning visions slowly lose a significant share of their aims during the implementation phase and why there often occurs a significant time span between vision and implementation. Using the development of the deindustrialised Norra Sorgenfri neighbourhood in central Malmö, Sweden, as an example, the author enquires into why developing the area became so complicated, and why the original vision, with its focus on social sustainability, largely disappeared despite private developers having invested in land acquisition in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Based on document analysis of the vision for Norra Sorgenfri from 2006 and the subsequent planning programme from 2008, as well as interviews with planners and property developers, this article seeks to highlight the mechanisms due to which the implementation of the Norra Sorgenfri plans differs from original visions and strategies, as well as examine why the process was so slow. The authors conclude that the planning office’s ‘visioning’ becomes powerless in the face of ‘property-led regeneration’ where private developers have most of the decision-making power, and that the ‘social sustainability’ ideal cannot be achieved through physical regeneration alone.