Medborgarmedverkan i planerings- och designprocessen

Abstract: The theme of this thesis is citizen participation in the planning- and design process. It turns to everyone that studies landscape architecture or work as landscape architects and I hope that it can function as a ground for discussions as well as a source for inspiration. Rågsved is a suburb south of Stockholm. Just outside the centre of this suburb, a small industrial area called Snösätra, is located. In a few years time the leaseholds for the small industries will expire and the key question is: What will happen then? This is my general concern and it was the main cause for me to start this particular work. How do you attend to a place that appears like blank sheet of paper? To an empty page that can be filled with an infinite number of different formulations. This was my first consideration and I realized that the only way to solve the problem was to do a careful examination of the place. I chose to ask the citizens for help in this survey and at the same time I did an accurate documentation of the whole process. The final structure of the thesis consists of three parts. In the first part I have tried to find out how work with citizen participation can appear today and what kind of a role the landscape architect can play in these projects. I have met people that have their own experiences, thoughts and ideas around the subject of citizen participation. By talking to these persons I have created a stable basis for my own reflections and points of standing. The second part consists of a documentation of my own citizen participation-project, called 1+1=3, which I have run in Rågsved. In this project I have tried to develop the form of the traditional, public consultation meeting. And I have tried to answer the question of how to give a heterogeneous group of people a possibility to get engaged in the issue of the future function of the industrial area called Snösätra. The project ended up in an "open house"-meeting just outside the subway station in Rågsved and another meeting in Rågsveds Folkets hus a few weeks later. The final chapter of the thesis consists of a conceptual outline of the future site. I have merged the physical conditions of the site with the result from the citizen participation-project. My intention is that the concept will work as a basis for further discussions and maybe constitute a foundation for a more profound design programme to be developed in the future.