| 121. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek
(författare)
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The spatial dimension of project-making
- 2019
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Ingår i: In: Dymitrow, M. and Ingelhag, K. (eds.), Anatomy of a 21st-century sustainability project: The untold stories. - Gothenburg : Mistra Urban Futures / Chalmers University of Technology. - 9789198416633
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding the spatial dimension of project-making is important because projects are almost always restricted to a spatial focus – they are being spatialised. There are spatial projects referring to the geographical scale of the project, such as global, local or regional projects. There are spatial projects referring to hierarchies of political entities, such as state, county or municipal projects. There are spatial projects referring to the character and quality of the area of deployment, such as rural, urban or nature projects. There are spatial projects referring to the relations between the involved actors, such as national, international or supranational projects. Finally, there are spatial projects referring to specific administrative or functional units, such as Gothenburg, the City Park, Main Street, Lake Victoria or the Amazon. The question, hence, is less whether projects are spatialised, but why and how. A long history of spatial analyses in scholarly literature reveals the problematic nature of thinking about societal projects in terms of spatial demarcations. Spatial thinking before problem thinking could be described as a form of apophenic or pareidolic perspectivism conditioned by the prevalent culture of spatial planning, which may or may not impair sound diagnosis and intervention. In this chapter, I approach the phenomenon of spatial thinking in the context of project-making from several perspectives, each with its own set of assumptions and hidden problems. The purpose of such an approach is to raise awareness about the complicated role space plays in project-making upon our decisions, actions, and the consequences of those actions.
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| 122. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Transcending the rural-urban meme: Hammarkullen – a landscape caught in-between
- 2014
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Ingår i: Unraveling the logics of landscape. Eds.: Stenseke, M., Dymitrow, M., Saltzman, K. et al.; 26th session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape, 8–12 September, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg & Mariestad, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- People’s different relations towards their environment are always the result of how they perceive it and how different spatialities are ascribed symbolic meaning. Taking into account these relations when formulating policies aimed at solving various problems could offer valuable knowledge for more sustainable planning and management. In certain areas, however, achieving this goal might prove extra problematic due to the preconceived vision of how problems associated with certain spatialities ought to be handled. Hammarkullen, a suburb of Gothenburg, is an extreme example of this. For decades facing socio-economic and structural problems, the struggles of Hammarkullen could be described as a “wicked problem”. Many programs have been undertaken to address it, the latest of which is one of Sweden’s largest EU-projects within urban development. In light of the considerable criticism it has received, we evaluated its inadequacy to solve the identified problems through three case studies. We conclude that a major contributing factor is the urban bias impregnating the design of urban development projects. It happens because the concept of “urbanity” is not one-dimensional (there are at least 40 attributes defining it); moreover it is juxtaposed “rurality” as its conceptual counterpart. Since any of the constitutive attributes is neither fully “rural” nor “urban”, different spatialities assume manifold overlapping combinations. Although Hammarkullen has an urban morphology, many of its attributes fall within the conceptual range of “rurality”, and should be addressed accordingly. However, since urbanity is most often viewed as morphology, the “urban shell” of Hammarkullen inadvertently prompts “urban” development projects. In that light, we resort to a landscape approach as an alternative conceptual tool to circumvent the rural-urban impasse in problem-solving. As a relational, non-essentialist technique, a landscape approach has the potential to capture the individual needs of each spatiality, including those that are not necessarily aligned with a conceptual rural-urban axis.
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| 123. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek
(författare)
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Understanding great social challenges of today through the lens of cultural contingents
- 2019
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Ingår i: 70th Anniversary Symposium of the Macedonian Geographic Society: “New Trends in Geography”, 3–4 October 2019, Ohrid, North Macedonia.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We live in times of rapid changes and unpredictability. Great social challenges of today, such as free access to clean water, food, air, health care and education, no longer come one by one (Agenda 2030). What makes them great is their ever-greater entanglement in one other and across multiple levels, including landscapes, regimes and niches. To this background, a major challenge facing many countries today is how to successfully address issues of interlocking problems of unsustainability caused by cultural contingents. Yet, understanding of the ways how culture influences adaptation to sustainable development is still not fully understood, amidst a plethora of literature on systems thinking and complexity science. By resorting to insights from an eclectic pool of knowledge, this presentation seeks more human-centered explanations for the retention of undesired ways of thinking. This is done be exploring the concept of ‘modern outpost of unsustainability’, i.e. a locality exhibiting a complex web of social entanglements that cause and maintain several dilemmas at once. By focusing on the formation of individual mindsets through various cultural carriers of meaning, this study wishes to better understand ways in which particular discourses and social mechanisms may create lock-ins of unsustainability, and what socio-material effects such lock-ins may incur upon institution building, technical development and self-governance.
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| 124. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek
(författare)
-
Urban Rural Gothenburg
- 2017
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Ingår i: Mistra Urban Futures Annual International Conference: “Realising Just Cities – Learning Through Comparison”, 13–15 November 2017, Kisumu, Kenya.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Urban Rural Gothenburg (URG) is a three-year EU project for sustainable development with the overarching aim to create improved conditions for green innovation and green business development between the city and the countryside. Operating in five testbeds in four local hubs in north-eastern Gothenburg, the project seeks to develop and implement new low-carbon approaches to local development, with particular linkages to food, logistics, tourism, and ecological business models. Using this methodology, but also through cross-border cooperation between the municipality, the business sector, the residents, the civil society and academia ( the penta-helix model), URG wants to contribute to the fulfillment of Gothenburg’s 2017 sustainability goals. This involves combining innovations for social improvement with a reduction of environmental and climate impact to become a sustainable city of globally and locally equitable emissions. URG targets primarily small- and medium-sized enterprises by making use of the local communities and their potential to transition into a more sustainable society. The targeted companies are chiefly to be related to the food value chain "from farm to table", which involves not only food producers, conveyors and logisticians, but also distributors, marketing, communications and IT specialists, stores and local markets, restaurants, hotels and other tourism-related businesses, as well as recycling and knowledge enterprises. In other words, URG is meant to serve as an accelerator for circular economies and green business development with a strong local anchoring.
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| 125. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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When concepts go bad: Iatrogenesis and stigmatization
- 2017
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Ingår i: 7th Nordic Geographers Meeting; “Geographies of inequalities”, Stockholm University – Department of Human Geography, 18-21 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper we address the concepts of ‘urbanity’ and ‘rurality’ as potentially counterproductive ideas in development planning when deployed as guiding perspectives in areas struggling with severe territorial stigmatization. We address this issue through a suburban example; more specifically in the context of a recently finalized development project, whose focus suddenly shifted from ‘urban’ to ‘rural’. Our analysis shows that ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ are not neutral spatial designators but cultural constructs burdened with all the intricacies ‘culture’ may imply. Hence, when used unreflexively in certain spatialities, they may turn into virulent and covertly belligerent concepts, inadvertently adding to the area’s stigma instead of countering it. Here we draw on the principle of iatrogenesis, which denotes any benevolent action that unintentionally produces negative outcomes. We argue that since many areas lack the presumed conceptual foundation for a specific brand of action, development programs labeled as ‘rural’ or ‘urban’ are not only likely to fail, but also to potentially cause harm. Effectively, this failure is blamed on the area’s insolubility (rather than the label), inadvertently upholding stigmatization. We conclude that we need to be wary of this dimension of rural-urban conceptualization, because if we more perpetuate a spatial stereotype than help understand its hyper-complexities, we may turn it into a pernicious conceptual filter that diverts attention from pressing sustainability issues.
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| 126. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Wicked problems or wicked solutions? Sustainability–differently
- 2018
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Ingår i: Urban Research, Mistra Urban Futures, 18 September 2018, Gothenburg, Sweden..
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Obtaining functional and inclusive societal organization is not a simple matter of ‘doing it’ by subscribing to winning formulae as there are many choices to be made in the process. Given that conceptual frameworks always guide thoughts, judgments and actions, how we relate to ‘sustainability’ specifically becomes relevant if we aim to achieve a more liveable society. It is increasingly appreciated how all societies contain ‘wicked problems’ or socio-cultural challenges that are multidimensional, hard to pin down and consequently extremely challenging to solve. This seminar engages with the consequent need to recognise this complexity by assembling three ‘brave’ takes on far-advanced problems bedevilling conventionally conceptualised paths towards sustainability. Arguing against oversimplification that comes from domination of polarizing concepts and unquestioned practices and rhetorics, the aim of this seminar is to foster explorations into new territories from which we may learn. This involves thinking differently, even if such thinking must sometimes both provoke and cauterise dissent, and revisit divergent ideological standpoints in order not to dismiss out-of-hand ways towards supposedly common goals. [With contributions from: Margareta Forsberg, Susan Runsten, Karin Ingelhag, Ulrica Gustafsson and Shelley Kotze]
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| 127. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
-
Wicked problems or wicked solutions? Sustainability–differently
- 2018
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Ingår i: Urban Research, Mistra Urban Futures, 18 September 2018, Gothenburg, Sweden..
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Obtaining functional and inclusive societal organization is not a simple matter of ‘doing it’ by subscribing to winning formulae as there are many choices to be made in the process. Given that conceptual frameworks always guide thoughts, judgments and actions, how we relate to ‘sustainability’ specifically becomes relevant if we aim to achieve a more liveable society. It is increasingly appreciated how all societies contain ‘wicked problems’ or socio-cultural challenges that are multidimensional, hard to pin down and consequently extremely challenging to solve. This seminar engages with the consequent need to recognise this complexity by assembling three ‘brave’ takes on far-advanced problems bedevilling conventionally conceptualised paths towards sustainability. Arguing against oversimplification that comes from domination of polarizing concepts and unquestioned practices and rhetorics, the aim of this seminar is to foster explorations into new territories from which we may learn. This involves thinking differently, even if such thinking must sometimes both provoke and cauterise dissent, and revisit divergent ideological standpoints in order not to dismiss out-of-hand ways towards supposedly common goals.
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| 128. |
- Feltynowski, Marcin, et al.
(författare)
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Some problems of local development: the example of former State Agricultural Farms in Poland
- 2015
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Ingår i: Research for Rural Development 2015, Annual 21st International Scientific Conference Proceedings, Latvia University of Agriculture, 13–15 May 2015, Jelgava, Latvia. - 1691-4031 .- 2255-923X. ; 2, s. 237-243
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The paper aims at examining the levels of social cohesion and socio-economic dysfunctionality in former State Agricultural Farms (post-PGR) areas, and to assess the possibilities for initiating bottom-up actions and for participating in the creation of mechanisms for local development. Data used in the study was obtained in multi-methods approach, i.e. mainly during a questionnaire survey, in-depth interviews and observation concerning the financial situation and the social environment (social problems and cohesion), that is, the elements predicted to be the key factors obstructing effective corrective actions within local development. We have demonstrated that post-PGR areas should be treated as especially problematic not only because of their economic dysfunctionality, but mainly because of the complex social problems they experience (lack of local ties, hostility, aggression between neighbors). Such a difficult environment requires substantial interference which should take into account the problems specific to the population. The threat resulting from the heterogeneity of such communities should be a significant factor shaping the perception of local development problems.
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| 129. |
- Fermskog, Kristina, 1977, et al.
(författare)
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From skipped free school lunches to poverty-induced food deserts: Some thoughts on Gothenburg’s local food strategy – and how to make it happen
- 2018
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Ingår i: Mistra Urban Futures Annual International Conference “Comparative Co-Production”, SunSquare Conference Centre, 5–7 November 2018, Cape Town, South Africa.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The city of Gothenburg is devoted to establishing a local food strategy (GAFS) able to transform the local food system into one of healthy and sustainable food supply to all Gothenburgers, while at the same time decreasing the environmental impact globally. Departing from the Gothenburg municipality’s environmental and climate programs, the GAFS also relates back to the Swedish environmental goals and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As such, GAFS is a municipal mission with global ambitions, but it is also an active testbed within the project Urban Rural Gothenburg with the goal to lay bare GAFS’s preconditions to obtain the desired effect. While the idea is an attractive one and in line with current calls for food sustainability, the practical work process has been marred by loose and indirect interaction between the actors as well as insufficient knowledge of the stakeholders’ preconditions and priorities to secure stronger impact. An important factor in this dimension has been the overwhelming scope of what the food strategy must cover in order to be successful. This presentation focuses on two of them: skipped free school lunches and poverty-induced food deserts. On the one hand, the city of Gothenburg offers free school lunches to all its school children, which nonetheless are surreptitiously skipped due to children’s poor understanding of the nutritious, ecological and just value of such lunches. On the other hand, certain areas of Gothenburg, like Hammarkullen with 8,000 inhabitants, have not had a supermarket since the 1990s due to major food chains’ disinterest in establishing themselves in poor immigrant neighborhoods (due to demand for very cheap foods or certain types of foods, e.g. halal or kosher). Instead the citizens are forced to travel up to 1 hour to procure affordable food (car ownership is extremely low) or to buy small portions of grossly overpriced products from local street vendors. These two examples show how both the use and underuse of political power is problematic in different circumstances, with similarly adverse effects for a sustainable local food strategy. In this presentation, we focus on this worrying divergence by discussing the hidden traps within, but also by bringing forth known success stories as possible ways forward.
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| 130. |
- Fermskog, Kristina, et al.
(författare)
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From skipped free school lunches to poverty-induced food deserts: Some thoughts on Gothenburg’s local food strategy – and how to make it happen
- 2018
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Ingår i: Mistra Urban Futures Annual International Conference “Comparative Co-Production”, SunSquare Conference Centre, 5–7 November 2018, Cape Town, South Africa.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The city of Gothenburg is devoted to establishing a local food strategy (GAFS) able to transform the local food system into one of healthy and sustainable food supply to all Gothenburgers, while at the same time decreasing the environmental impact globally. Departing from the Gothenburg municipality’s environmental and climate programs, the GAFS also relates back to the Swedish environmental goals and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As such, GAFS is a municipal mission with global ambitions, but it is also an active testbed within the project Urban Rural Gothenburg with the goal to lay bare GAFS’s preconditions to obtain the desired effect. While the idea is an attractive one and in line with current calls for food sustainability, the practical work process has been marred by loose and indirect interaction between the actors as well as insufficient knowledge of the stakeholders’ preconditions and priorities to secure stronger impact. An important factor in this dimension has been the overwhelming scope of what the food strategy must cover in order to be successful. This presentation focuses on two of them: skipped free school lunches and poverty-induced food deserts. On the one hand, the city of Gothenburg offers free school lunches to all its school children, which nonetheless are surreptitiously skipped due to children’s poor understanding of the nutritious, ecological and just value of such lunches. On the other hand, certain areas of Gothenburg, like Hammarkullen with 8,000 inhabitants, have not had a supermarket since the 1990s due to major food chains’ disinterest in establishing themselves in poor immigrant neighborhoods (due to demand for very cheap foods or certain types of foods, e.g. halal or kosher). Instead the citizens are forced to travel up to 1 hour to procure affordable food (car ownership is extremely low) or to buy small portions of grossly overpriced products from local street vendors. These two examples show how both the use and underuse of political power is problematic in different circumstances, with similarly adverse effects for a sustainable local food strategy. In this presentation, we focus on this worrying divergence by discussing the hidden traps within, but also by bringing forth known success stories as possible ways forward.
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