Hållbar utveckling i svensk planeringspraktik : en diskussion kring förtätning och andra ambitioner

Abstract: If one looks at physical planning in Sweden today one can see that while talking about densification of existing development, reduced emissions and careful use of important land, urban sprawl is a fact with development of sheer residential districts in the urban edges and shopping malls in each and every municipality. As sustainable development is an essential goal for physical planning to strive towards, it is worth questioning if the direction of today’s planning will lead to the goal. A sustainable development can be seen as an obvious to goal aim at. In reality the aim means a hard and complex work. A surface efficient development is of importance for physical planning in Sweden as it is restrictive with use of new land, such as vital agricultural land. Because the perspective of sustainability is hard to pin down to one single stand on development density, new land is constantly claimed for development. Tree different aspects of sustainability are often mentioned in the discussion; the ecological, the economical and the social. If the development of society shall be regarded as sustainable, it needs to be sustainable in an overall perspective combining the various aspects. At the same time large global changes are to be expected in the next decades, which put demands on restrictive land use. This thesis approaches step by step the notion sustainable development and it’s meaning for physical planning in Sweden. Initially the intentions of laws and governmental aims concerning the expression and how these are interpreted in planning visions are mentioned. The discussion continues on factors which will show complicate the strive to reach the goal. As restrictive land use is only one of several aspects of sustainability, further profits that can be gained from a denser, more surface efficient development are discussed as well. A hypothesis for this thesis was that an index model on density in a development could contribute to a clearer direction for sustainable planning, hence a tool like an index is discussed.