Social Sustainability, Cultural heritage, and the Swedish Million Homes program

Abstract: Creating socially sustainable residential areas is an important topic as urbanisation and migration increase. This thesis is about Swedish residential areas built during the period 1965 to 1974 as the result of a political programme called the Million homes programme. The areas hold cultural historic values being the physical manifestation of an era of the Swedish history that has strongly shaped our present society, but is now threatened by lack of social sustainability. The Million homes areas constitute a large part of the residential areas in Sweden today. By the end of the programme there were an abundance of housing options in Sweden, and empty apartments were in a high degree located in the modernistic suburbs, as people with good economy chose to move elsewhere. To fill the apartment, the municipalities used them for social contracts. The areas became segregated, and still are today despite several attempts to improve their popularity. This thesis analyses various measures and strategies for improving social sustainability in the Million homes areas, and their effects on the cultural heritage. The ambition with the study is to give a broad, cross-functional view of the topic, studying various approaches, e.g. physical renovations to social activities to cooperation with the police. The thesis starts with a literature study of social sustainability in residential areas, and the factors influencing it. A classification of aspects influencing social sustainability is created, to be used for evaluating the results from the case study in the second part of the thesis. The case study is performed in six suburbs in the Stockholm region, being new developments during the Million homes program. Social sustainability in each area is evaluated using the aspects defined in the first part of the study, and measures to improve social sustainability in the areas, and their effect on the intangible cultural heritage, are discussed. The work is valid for goal number 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals Sustainable cities and communities, in particular target number 11.3 Inclusive and sustainable urbanisations, as well as goal number 5 Gender equality and goal number 10 Reduced inequalities