Measuring Social Sustainability of Urban Space in Sweden

Abstract: The urban population has rapidly grown in recent years, consequently creating challenges for sustainable development. To achieve sustainability, economic, ecological, and social sustainability are required to be in balance. However, social sustainability is often argued to be challenging and complex that lacks a common definition, creating a de-prioritization of social sustainability in urban development. This master’s thesis aimed to provide a higher prioritization and establish a common definition of the concept through the development of a framework for measuring social sustainability of urban space in a Swedish context. This framework aimed to benefit the spatial planning practice when developing urban spaces socially sustainable.    Through a literature review, a policy analysis, and interviews conducted with spatial planners from Stockholm and Gothenburg, a foundation of a framework was created based on a set of indicators and sub-indicators. The research resulted in one main indicator creating the foundation of Swedish social sustainability, followed by two categorizations of physical respective non-physical factors each containing several indicators and sub-indicators for social sustainability. The result indicated that Swedish social sustainability partly differed from the general approach of the concept through its emphasis within a few indicators, but generally approached similar indicators as within existing research. Further, the research redirected the stated challenge regarding the lack of a common definition of social sustainability towards the suggested main challenge regarding a lack of a common understanding. The proposed foundation of a framework was argued to meet the stated challenge through the understanding of different aspects of importance within social sustainability.    Lastly, the master’s thesis questioned the practice of measuring social sustainability and the consequences that would follow such measures. The research showed that social sustainability could be measured but the question remained whether it should. However, the research indicated that the implementation of such framework would benefit the spatial planning practice to a certain extent.