| 1. |
- Gustafsson, Jennie
(author)
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Renovations as an investment strategy : circumscribing the right to housing in Sweden
- 2021
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In: Housing Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0267-3037 .- 1466-1810. ; , s. 1-22
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- There is an emergent field of writings on financialized landlords’ undertaking of apartment renovations as an investment strategy and its effect on housing inequalities. Seldom do these studies contextualize these tendencies within countries’ specific housing policy traditions. Therefore, through a qualitative case study in a neighbourhood in Sweden, this paper aims to uncover how private landlords undertake renovations as an investment strategy and its effect on tenants and, in turn, on the hybrid character of a universal housing system. It finds that renovations enable landlords to extract value from the built environment while tenants experience rising rents, a lack of information, poor property maintenance, and apprehension. Hence, I argue that renovations represent an investment strategy that serves to undermine the traditional social right to housing within a universal housing policy context. The paper thus furthers knowledge on how the situatedness of financialization tendencies entails their translation through and transformation of housing systems.
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| 2. |
- Grange, Kristina, 1970, et al.
(author)
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Deconstructing the urban viewpoint : Exploring uneven regional development with Nancy Fraser’s notion of justice
- 2024
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In: Urban Studies. - : Sage Publications. - 0042-0980 .- 1360-063X. ; , s. 1-19
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Uneven regional development fomented by city-centric growth agendas generates significant challenges for regional peripheries. Placing regional margins and other plural geographies at the centre, in this article we apply a normative framework based on justice theory to uncover the dominance of urban viewpoints in urban regional development policy. Departing from Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional justice theory, we provide a deconstruction of city-centrism by illustrating how regional disparities in two regions in Sweden are not only reproduced by economic maldistribution but also by political misrepresentation and cultural misrecognition. By doing so, we illustrate the fruitfulness of applying a normative justice framework to create a broader understanding of factors that contribute to the political production of uneven regional development and need to be addressed if a transformative and progressive change is to occur.
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| 3. |
- Kalyukin, Alexander, 1989-, et al.
(author)
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Continuities and discontinuities of Russian urban housing : The Soviet housing experiment in historical long-term perspective
- 2020
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In: Urban Studies. - : Sage Publications. - 0042-0980 .- 1360-063X. ; 57:8, s. 1768-1785
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Did the socialist experiment disrupt continuity in Russian urban housing? Based on a unique collection of urban data covering several hundred Russian cities and spanning three regimes across more than a century, this paper gives a nuanced account of continuities and discontinuities of housing in post-Soviet cities. Three main housing characteristics are analysed: urban density (persons per building and living space per capita), ownership structure and the modernisation of stock (building material and provision with amenities). Although all Russian cities underwent a number of major shocks and regime changes during the course of the 20th century, their rankings with regard to these three key housing characteristics are still significantly correlated over time, whereas living space per capita is largely uncorrelated over time. This holds true despite significant convergence processes in almost all dimensions and also when including contemporary control variables. We hypothesise that local or regional building traditions, regional differentiation in Soviet urban planning as well as Soviet land use specificities could explain differential growth across cities. Going beyond existing late-Soviet-legacy timeframes, the long-term perspective reveals that even major regime shocks did not completely erase regionally shaped patterns in housing conditions.
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| 4. |
- Kusevski, Dragan, et al.
(author)
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The Business of Improving Neighborhoods : A Critical Overview of Neighborhood-Based Business Improvement Districts (NBIDs) in Sweden
- 2023
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In: Urban Affairs Review. - : Sage Publications. - 1078-0874 .- 1552-8332. ; 59:4, s. 1046-1079
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article offers an overview of neighbourhood-based BIDs (NBIDs) in Sweden. Swedish NBIDs tend to appear in stigmatized residential areas engaging with pressing sets of urban issues that have been longstanding concern of social policy. Their overarching goal is raising property values in neighborhoods on the edge between urban decline and (re)development potential. Emerging in a neoliberalizing institutional context, NBIDs present themselves as correctives to public-policy failures by promoting property-oriented solutions. The adaptation of the BID model in the Swedish 'post-welfare' landscape, however, exhibits, and arguably exacerbates, the shortcomings found in BID elsewhere. Their opaque institutional structure and lack of accountability contribute to curbing democratic influence over local development, thus reinforcing spatial inequalities. We argue that the growing political advocacy for the institutionalization of the BID model in Sweden presents a new milestone in the neoliberalization of urban governance, as private actors are promoted to legitimate co-creators of urban policy.
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| 5. |
- Listerborn, Carina, 1967-, et al.
(author)
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Claiming the right to dignity : New organizations for housing justice in neoliberal Sweden
- 2020
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In: Radical Housing Journal. - : Radical Housing Journal. - 2632-2870. ; 2:1, s. 119-137
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The lack of affordable housing for people with low income, shrinkingpublic resources, and new political conflicts threaten the availability ofhousing, at the same time as aggressive forms of urban renewal arecausing displacement through ‘renoviction’, putting tenants in criticalsituations. In this article, we focus on the acts of resistance and newsocial organization trends that have emerged in relation to the praxis ofrenoviction used by landlords and other local authorities, and thefrustration caused by this praxis. We claim that these new forms oforganization are using the concept of renoviction in articulating currentstruggles for housing justice. Methodologically, we point out thenecessity of urban research conducted in close collaboration withactivism, as a way for mutual learning and support. Moreover, wesuggest that these acts of resistance should be understood as happeningwithin a broader context of economic and political changes affectingthe housing market, and in relation to the increased racialization ofpoverty and territorial stigmatization in Swedish cities. To illustrate andthen strive to understand the ongoing resistance and demands forhousing justice, we focus on national activist networks emerging inresponse to the neoliberal housing crisis. We maintain that emergingresistance in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Uppsala represents agrowing claim for housing justice. This resistance is based on people’severyday lives and is a cry for dignity in neighborhoods neglected byhousing companies.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Mangold, Mikael, et al.
(author)
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Increased rent misspent? : How ownership matters for renovation and rent increases in rental housing in Sweden
- 2023
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In: International journal of housing policy. - : Routledge. - 1949-1247 .- 1949-1255.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Renovations of the housing rental stock have become a political concern since they have been claimed to drive gentrification and affect tenants’ everyday lives as well as long-term housing conditions. Furthermore, new actors have entered the market, partly as a result of high supply on the international capital markets creating a flow of capital into market segments. This has led to a critique of private equity in the housing sector, and raised the question of the extent to which ownership of the rental stock matters for housing affordability. Yet there seems to be little systematic research on this topic. This study uses a unique dataset covering the entire rental housing stock in Sweden to address whether there are differences in renovation investments between different ownership groups. The purpose of this article is to increase understanding of how ownership affects renovation processes, and specifically to analyse to what extent, and how, private and public actors differ in renovation and rent setting decisions. Our results demonstrate that public housing companies raised rents less and renovated more, particularly in the lower-income segments of the multi-family building stock between 2014 and 2020. © 2023 The Author(s).
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| 8. |
- Singleton, Benedict, 1983
(author)
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Swedish bureaucratic biodiversity : Analysing municipal worker discourse with the theory of sociocultural viability
- 2023
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In: Environmental Policy and Governance. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1756-932X .- 1756-9338.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Cities are important sites for societal transitions towards sustainability, which is increasingly recognised around the issue of biodiversity conservation and protection. However, cities are often characterised by the need to develop and grow. Furthermore, efforts to promote sustainable development have been criticised as failing to address the fundamental causes of environmental destruction. In this article, based on interviews with bureaucrats and documentary analysis, I explore urban planning and biodiversity protection at four Swedish municipalities. Biodiversity protection has been an official goal in Sweden for 30 years. As such, my research aim is to explore how Swedish bureaucrats represent efforts to balance imperatives to develop cities and protect biodiversity. Taking an institutional approach, I identify what information is included and excluded. In assessing municipal discourse, I utilise the theory of sociocultural viability, which provides an analytical typology of four worldviews. I identify that within respondents' discourse, biodiversity primarily emerges as a product of a hierarchical view of reality, as a measurable object; an indicator; a characteristic; and as a provider that is both engineerable and replaceable. This was despite numerous respondents articulating an egalitarian desire for more holistic interpretations of biodiversity in urban planning, appreciative of its inherent worth. This suggests that biodiversity has largely been integrated into extant hierarchical conceptualisations of public administration. According to cultural theory, addressing wicked policy problems effectively requires insight from several of the typology's worldviews. As such, current practice may reiterate dominant contemporary views on nature rather than innovation towards a radically different society.
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| 9. |
- Valli, Chiara, 1985-
(author)
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Artistic careers in the cyclicality of art scenes and gentrification : symbolic capital accumulation through space in Bushwick, NYC
- 2022
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In: Urban geography. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0272-3638 .- 1938-2847. ; 43:8, s. 1176-1198
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Why and how do artists engage in activities that likely lead to gentrification, despite their awareness of its effects and despite that they will possibly be among the displaced groups? I highlight a missing link in existing literature explaining the recurring patterns of art scenes and gentrification in US cities– the cyclicality of artistic careers trajectories in art scenes’ spatiality. The study shows that the shifted reputation of the neighborhood in early stages of gentrification is instrumental to positioning individual cultural producers in the cultural field through the local art scene’s collective accumulation of symbolic capital. Early-career artists accumulate symbolic capital through space. Paired with the capitalist and racist legacies of the US city, this contributes to reproducing gentrification. Theoretically, the article draws from Bourdieu’s theory of the cultural field and geographical literature of the symbolic economy. Empirically, it draws on interviews with cultural producers in Bushwick (Brooklyn, NYC).
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| 10. |
- Tsoni, Ioanna, et al.
(author)
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Writings on the Wall: Textual Traces of Transit in the Aegean Borderscape
- 2019
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In: Borders in Globalization Review. - : University of Victoria Libraries. - 2562-9913. ; 1:1, s. 7-21
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Greek island of Lesvos has a centuries-old history as a site of departure, arrival, coexistence and resistance for the forcibly displaced. This migratory chronology, however, was overwritten by the unprecedented attention that Lesvos attracted during the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’. This paper examines vernacular aspects of bordering, specifically the practice of border crossers and other groups standing in solidarity with—or against—them, to inscribe messages on walls in and around carceral and public spaces, viewed as a process of constructing and contesting borders from below. Closely reading numerous inscriptions collected around Lesvos reveals how borders are constructed, enacted and contested from below through borderlanders’ discursive practices on some of the very walls that constitute the EU frontier’s material infrastructure. This study aims to advance understandings of the historical continuity of the Aegean borderscape as a complex landscape of border effects and affects that exceed borders’ legal, infrastructural and political dimensions, while also highlighting the persistence and importance of personal agency, self-authorship and identity reclamation by border populations even in the direst of circumstances.
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