| 1. |
- Eckersten, Sofia, 1989-
(författare)
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Advancing Sustainable Transport Systems : Strengthening environmental considerations and sustainability perspectives in Strategic Choice of Measures
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Addressing cross-cutting issues such as climate change, urbanization, andenvironmental degradation in policy and planning is key for transitioning toa sustainable society. In the work of societal and transport systemdevelopment, the integration of environmental and sustainabilityperspectives has never been more crucial. In urban areas, the interconnection between transport and land use is evident, and integrated transport and land use planning plays an important role in promotingsustainable transport systems. However, both the integration ofenvironmental and sustainability considerations in transport planning and the integration of land use and transport planning are complex challenges.This thesis explores the consideration of environmental aspects andsustainability perspectives in strategic transport planning, with a focus onthe Swedish Strategic Choice of Measures (SCM) approach and lessonslearnt from planning approaches in the Nordic countries. The thesis is primarily based on case studies of SCM processes in the Stockholm region. Empirical material has been collected through observations of SCMs involving public officials from the Swedish Transport Administration,municipalities in Stockholm Region, and Stockholm's public transportauthority, as well as through semi-structured interviews, focus groupinterviews, informal interviews and document studies, with a qualitative research approach.The thesis is a compilation of four scientific papers. Three of the papers (1,2, and 4) discuss the SCM process, and in two of the papers (2 and 4), SCM processes in the Stockholm region are used as empirical cases of howstrategic choices of measures have been made in transport and land useplanning. Paper 3 explores and draws lessons from Nordic planning instruments to coordinate transport and land use planning with the aim of promoting sustainable development. The results highlight the difference between engaging and non-engagingenvironmental aspects and advocate for a systems perspective in planning to understand connections and promote holistic solutions. Planning approaches from different Nordic countries, such as the Finnish MAL and the Norwegian Urban Growth Agreements, demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating transport and land use planning through instruments based oncollaboration between transport and land use actors. The results also identify challenges related to fragmented transport and land use planning,and that actors' vary in their engagement when addressing environmental and sustainability considerations in the SCM planning context. Effective collaboration and sustainable choices of measures relies on knowledgeable professionals being capable of interdisciplinary collaborations and innovative thinking, being part of and coordinating the planning process, i.e.SCM. The use of Integrated Landscape Character Assessment (ILCA) can provide a framework for cross-actor collaboration and has the potential to identify multifunctional solutions contributing to a sustainable societal transition. Overall, the results of the thesis emphasize the importance of integrating environmental and sustainability perspectives into transport planning to promote sustainable development.
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| 2. |
- Eckersten, Sofia, 1989-
(författare)
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New perspectives on Strategic Choice of Measures in Swedish Transport Planning
- 2022
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Rapid changes in the global climate and declining biodiversity pronounces the need for adapting the transport system and transport infrastructure, which influence several sustainability issues and cause direct environmental impact through their use of land, as well as indirect impacts, for example, emissions of pollutants to air and water. The Swedish Transport Administration (STA) is responsible for and conducts a large part of the transport planning in Sweden and the STA endeavor to increase collaboration with other societal actors in transport planning. In 2013, the Strategic Choice of Measure (SCM) process was introduced by the STA to facilitate collaboration among multiple societal actors in the early stages of transport planning. In the SCM process many of the choices are made that will affect the development of the transport system as well as the future transport system's impact on the environment. Integrating environmental aspects at an early planning stage, such as in the SCM process, can help reduce and avoid the environmental impact of the transport system. Therefore, this licentiate thesis aims to explore the consideration of environmental aspects in the SCM process (Paper 1), and to analyze the SCM process from a systems perspective in order to illuminate the consequences of system boundaries on how environmental aspects are considered and what aspects are included or left out (Paper 2). In addition, proposals are being developed to strengthen practice (Papers 1 and 2).To achieve the aims of the thesis, interview studies, document studies and observational studies have been performed. Also, a case study of two SCM processes was conducted. This dissertation shows that there are several challenges associated with the consideration of environmental aspects in SCM processes. For example, the increased element of collaboration in the planning process implies that the coordination of the process will affect which environmental aspects are considered and in what way. Furthermore, land-use and transport planning are coordinated in the SCM process, which often leads to conflicting ideas about how an area should be developed. By finding solutions to transport and land-use related problems with synergetic effects, conflicts may be solved, and transport, land-use and environmental needs may be met simultaneously. To identify this type of measure and packages of measures in an SCM process, tools that enable the identification of links between transport, land-use and environmental aspects can be used as support.
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| 3. |
- Wretling, Vincent
(författare)
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Bending the Curve – the Role and Interplay of Municipal Energy Planning and Municipal Spatial Planning for Climate Change Mitigation in Sweden
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The global climate is changing rapidly, which pronounces the need for imminently bending the curve of greenhouse gases emissions. The local authorities have been recognised as key actors in this decarbonisation, due to their wide-ranging responsibilities, including different mandates for local planning. The Swedish municipalities are no exception in this regard. In contrast, they stand out as being especially critical for Sweden’s efforts to reach climate neutrality in 2045 and multiple other sustainability objectives, since they are instructed to conduct municipal energy planning regarding supply and distribution of energy, have a monopoly on spatial planning and have been given a veto right for larger wind power establishments. There is, however, limited knowledge regarding the municipalities’ planning processes and institutional capacity building for handling climate change mitigation in their municipal planning. The overall aim of this compilation thesis, comprising five scientific papers, is to contribute with new knowledge regarding the role, process and interplay of municipal energy and climate planning, municipal spatial planning and municipal wind power planning for responding to the need for rapid decarbonisation, in order to identify pathways forward for building the municipalities’ institutional capacity. The thesis has a mixed methods approach comprising of semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, participant observation, a survey, statistical analyses, and multiple document analyses of either cross-sectional or longitudinal character that involves elements of both quantitative content analyses and thematic analyses. When synthesising the findings from Paper I-V, it is evident that the municipalities are responding to the climate crisis in multiple different ways. This includes that a proactive strategic energy and climate planning practice with the aim of reducing climate impact has emerged from the sectoral energy planning tradition. However, the impact assessment practice is deficient within municipal energy and climate planning, especially if the planning is conducted in a non-statutory form, in spite of it being indicated that impact assessment can facilitate the consideration of synergies and conflicts between different sustainability objectives as well as enabling to illuminate local benefits of climate action. Moreover, the municipalities have been integrating numerous different strategies for reduced climate impact into their Comprehensive Plans, relating to energy production, distribution and use, transport, and land use, and the findings suggest that such consideration of energy and climate aspects in the Comprehensive Plans have increased in the recent decades. This integration of climate change considerations into Comprehensive Plans has largely been spurred by the existence of a municipal energy and climate strategy or similar, which has enabled a two-way policy integration between these two policy spheres. The presence of energy and climate strategic competence within the municipal concern is an associated vital feature, since this facilitates the influx of knowledge through the participation in different regional-local and inter-municipal networks, which can then be disseminated internally and utilised in the comprehensive planning process. There is also a need for municipal officials to be given time and resources to interact with politicians in order to mobilise support and create a mandate for action.Simultaneously, the results illuminate that many municipalities are struggling with building sufficient institutional capacity for addressing climate change mitigation in their energy and climate strategic planning and their strategic spatial planning. This was manifested for example in the form that the adoption of both energy and climate-focused policy documents and wind power plans followed the temporal patterns of the presence of state-funded financial incentives and that more than one-fourth of the municipalities not having adopted an energy and climate-focused policy document during the studied twelve-year time span. This has also rendered in a more reactive municipal decision-making in relation to the municipal veto for wind power deployment, with implications for its legitimacy and public participation. Given the centrality of the municipalities, it is deemed vital to further promote the process of building institutional capacity for responding to the climate crisis in their municipal planning and decision-making. Increased continuity in the energy and climate strategic planning process, comprehensive planning process and wind power planning process could facilitate building support for integrating different strategies related to climate change mitigation in their planning and contribute to organisational learning. Moreover, the three modes of planning could be further interlinked, for example, by establishing objectives regarding greenhouse gases emissions and renewable electricity production in the energy and climate domain, which brings implications for the strategic spatial planning, and by initiating processes simultaneously and in an integrated fashion. If municipalities come to recognise the potential of a more proactive strategic-thinking SEA process, this could be another vehicle for increased sustainability consideration early in the process, when there is a window of opportunity for influencing the plan’s content to the greatest extent. Overall, this can lead to a more sustainability-led municipal planning, which can contribute to bending the curve of greenhouse gases emissions, while simultaneously providing synergies across other sustainability objectives.
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| 4. |
- Balfors, Berit, Professor, 1958-, et al.
(författare)
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Strategisk miljöbedömning för nationell transportplanering med fokus på inriktningsunderlaget
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Denna rapport utgör ett inspel till Trafikverket i en analys om hur strategisk miljöbedömning kan användas i den statliga transportplaneringens tidiga skeden med fokus på inriktningsunderlaget. Rapporten är framtaget inom projektet ”TRAMP- Är långsiktig transportplanering och miljöbedömning kompatibla processer?” som är ett forsknings- och innovationsprojekt (FoI), finansierat av Trafikverket under perioden 2017 - 2019. Deltagande forskare i projektet är Berit Balfors och Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling, KTH, Kristina Lundberg och Tobias Robinson, Ecoloop, Karolina Isaksson och Linnea Eriksson, VTI.FoI-projektet har planerats för att successivt leverera användbart underlag till Trafikverket. Föreliggande rapport är ett underlag inför Trafikverkets arbete med att ta fram ett inriktningsunderlag.
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| 5. |
- Bast, Sigvard, et al.
(författare)
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(Re)Planning of green infrastructure and nature-based solutions for sustainable urban transition
- 2022
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Ingår i: Book of abstracts. ; , s. 338-
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Landscape approaches are important for planning of urban sprawl in peri-urban landscapes, continuously emerging in many metropolitan regions. In the case of Stockholm Region, land-take and incremental urbanisation is a continouous process, while the regional development plan has ambitions to steer the overall development in a sustainable direction. This plan contains a green infrastructure effort building on a set of green wedges, mainly serving as support to the needs of the city and suburbs and their citizens. This initiative differ from the later green infrastructure action plan provided by the county administrative board, related to the EU biodiversity strategy and guidelines. The latter has a different approach, mainly targeting biodiversity goals as well as ecosystem services. These approaches differ from each other in several ways while both have unclear roles when it comes to municipal planning on different levels. Furthermore, the municipalities have their own initiatives when it comes to green infrastructure and nature-based solutions and it is not clear how the different planning tiers are linked to each other, to planning and management, and to multifunctional landscapes. The aim of the REPLAN project is to investigate how the different green infrastructure initiatives are linked to planning, to each other on different scales, and whether they can serve multi-functional landscapes when it comes to biodiversity and different ecosystem services. The REPLAN project involves stakeholders and practitioners on different planning levels for co-producing knowledge, methods and strategies for green infrastructure and nature-based solutions to serve as tools for sustainable transition of metropolitan areas and their peri-urban landscapes.
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| 6. |
- Brokking, Pieter, et al.
(författare)
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Municipal Practices for Integrated Planning of Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Development in the Stockholm Region
- 2021
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI AG. - 2071-1050. ; 13:18
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urban planning is assumed to play an important role in developing nature-based solutions (NBS). To explore how NBS is addressed in urban development, municipal planning practices are analyzed based on three case studies in the Stockholm region of Sweden. Through focus group discussions, interviews and document studies, the planning and implementation of NBS and their intended contribution to regional green infrastructure (GI) and social and ecological qualities are investigated. The results show that the planning and design of urban green spaces engages the local community. Moreover, different conceptual frameworks are used to strengthen an ecological perspective and nurture expected outcomes, in particular ecosystem services and GI. Through competence development and collaborative approaches, the co-creation of innovative solutions for public and private green spaces is promoted. However, institutional conditions, e.g., legal frameworks and landownership shape the planning process and can challenge the ability to enhance social and ecological qualities. An assessment of the planning processes indicates a strong focus on ecosystem services and local GI, while the potential to contribute to regional GI differs widely between cases. The study concludes that a knowledge-driven and integrative planning process can foster the potential of NBS for green and sustainable cities.
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| 7. |
- Eckersten, Sofia, et al.
(författare)
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Challenges and Opportunities in Early Stage Planning of Transport Infrastructure Projects : Environmental Aspects in the Strategic Choice of Measures Approach
- 2021
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI AG. - 2071-1050. ; 13:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Strategic Choice of Measures (SCM) approach aims to integrate different perspectives and identify measures to adapt new infrastructure projects to their local context at an early stage of Swedish transport planning. SCM is a loosely structured framework for collaboration between actors from, e.g., municipalities and the Swedish Transport Administration, in order to facilitate the coordination of transport planning and land use planning. This paper aims to explore the consideration of environmental aspects in early-stage transport planning by analyzing the SCM approach. An explorative research approach is applied based on literature studies, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group interview. The result shows that in the SCM process, environmental aspects such as noise and air pollution generated by road traffic in urban areas, engage the actors, whereas aspects related to landscape and water were perceived as poorly addressed and received less attention. The consideration of environmental aspects in the SCM process is affected by the local and national authorities' different interests and the competences involved. To consolidate environmental aspects in early transport planning, these aspects need to be explicitly addressed in the SCM guidelines and the link between the SCM and preceding and following planning stages needs to be strengthened.
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| 8. |
- Eckersten, Sofia, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring practices for facilitating integrated strategic land use and transport planning in the Nordic countries
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Transport and Land Use. - : Center for Transportation Studies. - 1938-7849. ; 16:1, s. 409-435
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Drawing on examples from the Nordic countries, this article aims to explore the practical application of strategic policy and planning instruments and approaches that facilitate the integration of land use and transport planning and promote sustainable policy measures through collaboration among stakeholders across various governance levels. This research applies a qualitative research design including literature research, interviews, and workshops involving practitioners from the five Nordic countries. In this paper, we present an overview of the planning structure in the Nordic countries, including institutions that govern land use and transport planning. We identify different approaches to bridge the gap between land use and transport planning, such as the Finger Plan in Denmark, MAL in Finland, Concept Studies in Norway, and Strategic Choice of Measures in Sweden. Many of the examples employ informal collaborative approaches among authorities to form a shared vision and seek consensus on a combination of policy measures and actions. The paper examines collaborative approaches in relation to regulatory planning and discusses the role of these processes in advancing integrated land use and transport planning and fostering sustainable urban development.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Eckersten, Sofia, et al.
(författare)
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Integrated Landscape Character Assessment as a tool to bridge the gap between Strategic Transport and Land Use planning
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study investigate the effectiveness of the Integrated Landscape CharacterAssessment (ILCA) within the Strategic Choice of Measures (SCM) processin transport and land use planning. The research emphasizes a systemsperspective crucial for understanding the complex interdependencies betweentransport, land use and sustainability concerns in planning. The ILCAprovides a structured approach to integrate social, natural, and culturaldimensions into the SCM, enhancing baseline knowledge essential for longtermplanning across various scales. Findings illustrate that ILCA promoteda deeper understanding of landscape interrelations and supported informeddecision-making aligned with sustainable development goals. Furthermore, itrevealed the ILCA's potential in fostering multi-actor coordination andtransdisciplinary collaboration, crucial for addressing sustainability challengesholistically. However, challenges persist, particularly in aligning scale andsectoral engagement, underscoring the need for flexible and inclusiveplanning approaches to effectively address cross-cutting policy issues intransport and land use planning.
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