The establishment of the documentsconnected to the detailed development plan –with focus on the aesthetic design program

Abstract: Aesthetic  design  programs  are  often  used  as  a  complimentary  document  to  detailed development plans in Sweden and they focus on the areas architecture and design. The content varies between programs because there are no requirements in the Swedish Planning and Building Act (plan- och bygglagen, PBL) of neither the establishment nor the content. The general development of the detailed development plans and the connected aesthetic design program is that they are getting more and more detailed early in the spatial planning process which violates the intentions of PBL by not using brief outlines in the beginning of the spatial planning process. Due to the lack of requirements of the establishment of the aesthetic design program there is also no clear or statutory way of linking the two documents together. How the linking is done is the municipalities own decision, which leads to many variants that affect the municipality in its work in different ways. The purpose of my master thesis is to create an understanding of why the spatial planning process  is  conducted  the  way  it  is  and  how  the  detailed  development  plans  become  so detailed. This by conducting an empirical qualitative spatial planning process description of 10 detailed development plans in Stockholm County, with emphasis on the aesthetic design program, and interviews with the plan architect of each detailed development plan. The study showed that the project leaders and the project group from the municipality have the  biggest  influence  on  the  spatial  planning  process.  They  decide  which  documents  to establish, when to establish them, they take care of all the mandatory parts of the process and they decide the content of the aesthetic design program after discussion with the developer and consultants. The developer produces the documents required by the municipality as a basis for decision making and the aesthetic design program with the help from its consultants. The developers probably establish the aesthetic design program due to lack of competence from the municipality but also out of practical reasons. Because the developers very often act as initiators to the process they already have made sketches of the area with the help from consultants which easily can produce the aesthetic design program because they are already so involved in the project. The politicians have not been involved in the making of the aesthetic design program, neither has the public used its opportunities of public influence (samråd, granskning) to get their point across regarding the aesthetic design program.