Sweden’s Preparedness for Immigration and its Coherence with Sustainable Housing-with a case study of the city of Uppsala

Abstract: For decades, many European countries with strong economy have experienced substantial immigration. The pressure increased strongly in the last couple of years when civil and regional war in some of the middle Asian countries forced its residents towards European countries. This has led to increase in population of the host country, which has implications in terms of consumption of resources such as water and land; imposes financial burden on the Government to create more jobs and basic infrastructure like housing, schools, medical facilities etc. In view of the impacts of immigration on the host country, an integrated perspective is required, which links sustainable housing need with the labour market and education needs. This project investigates the policies and approaches that the Swedish Government has adopted in relation to the sustainable housing and immigrants, by way of a case study of the city/municipality of Uppsala. The project further explores the policies and approaches with respect to various indicators for sustainable housing such as adequate security; accessibility; building specifications related to fire, structure; basic infrastructure; and in context with labour market and education access. A scoring method is adopted to analyse the extent to which present approaches support sustainable housing development. In case the approach is not in coherence, measures are suggested which could transform these approaches into sustainable housing policy approaches. The results of the analysis are applied to the formulation of three scenarios. The preferable scenario highlights that the authorities and agencies are required to work together on the common platform towards the provision of sustainable housing to the immigrants. This would require reorganization, concrete decisions on amendment of certain policies and actions in order to make the housing solutions viable and sustainable for the immigrants.