Greenery and biodiversity in the changing urban landscape

Abstract: Spårvägen is a neighborhood in Malmö that is being transformed from a bus depot in an old industrial area to an attractive residential neighborhood. The thesis investigates the role of greenery and biodiversity in the changing urban landscape in Spårvägen. The research analyzes how tensions between political demands on biodiversity in relation to economic structures are forming the urban greenery in the landscape. The research is investigating Spårvägen and how greenery there is taking form in relation to scalar and spatial dimensions of landscape change, its historical landscape, the production of functional landscapes and the power in the landscape. The research concludes that the greenery in Spårvägen is formed to function mainly as an attractive component in the landscape and that the contribution to biodiversity is difficult to control. Tensions between economic structures and the political demand for biodiversity are therethrough materialized in the greenery in Spårvägen.