Ongoing Projects

A Thinking Practice is addressing collective learning processes in relation to listening, asymmetries and not-knowing.

Transforming in the Interface of Planning (TRANSPLACE) is a research school for the acceleration of sustainability transformation at the intersection between urban development and transport planning through reflexive capacity building.

Mistra Sustainable Consumption is a research programme that aims to stimulate a transition to more sustainable consumption in Sweden. The goal is to contribute to change through increased knowledge of how sustainable consumption that is currently practiced by a few can be scaled up and become more common. The focus is on the areas of food, vacations and furnishing.

The sustainability transition of cities is of central importance for achieving climate and sustainability objectives in ways which are deemed socially fair. The project explores approaches to better consider both uncertainty and different ways to strengthen accessibility through strategic transport planning. Scenario planning is applied together with seven cities. Guidelines will be developed, grounded in gained insights and experiences.

The project’s goal is to investigate the possible role of teleworking for rural development in post-pandemic Sweden. The aims of the project are to study the opportunities and obstacles for teleworking, to study the conditions under which it might contribute to rural development, and to study current and possible policies for using teleworking as a tool for rural development.

Better Embedded Labs for More Synergistic Sustainable Urban Transformation Planning

The project investigates grassroots initiatives for energy transition.

This project is about walking in cities, now and then. Considering streets as public spaces it will examine how changes to their physical layout and innovations in traffic technology impacted the (dis)integration of our most sustainable mode of mobility: the pedestrians.

This project is about continuity and change in the publicness of public transport since the mid-19th century up to the present day. It aims to inform today’s policy making by qualifying taken for granted ideas about what constitutes public transport.

A vital necessity for the continuation of life on earth, soil is an underexplored feature of today’s planetary challenges in need of creative intervention. The life-sustaining skin of topsoil is disappearing rapidly on a global scale, to an important extent through soil sealing. This project inquiries into the value and future of soil in urbanized landscapes and attends to soil as a collaborator, with potential to trigger synergistic effects across several SDGs.

A ‘green transition’ will, like all major societal transformations, impact both social and technical aspects of society and reallocate social and economic benefits and costs in different ways. This project critically examines pathways for transition in the petro-chemical and iron and steel industries, with a focus on Västra Götaland and Norrbotten.

Research on spatial planning for urban sustainability transformations has highlighted the importance of local actors in catalyzing radical urban change through experimental projects. However, the task of generating knowledge on the basis of such exemplary projects is increasingly placed upon learning intermediaries – organizations operating across governance scales to aggregate knowledge from a diverse set of actors and network configurations. The purpose of this project is therefore to use qualitative social science and co-production methods to critically investigate the learning ecosystems of sustainable urban development and, moreover, how these systems can effectively be improved to support urban sustainability transformations in Sweden.

Often discussed under the umbrella term “collaborative housing”, it is frequently argued that alternative housing forms are well suited to address various sustainability challenges. This project provides a critical and interdisciplinary assessment of whether alternative housing forms ca contribute to comprehensive sustainability goals, and the barriers and opportunities for this.

Norma gathers researchers engaged in norm-critical perspectives on sustainability. Through critical research, our mission is to make visible the power structures that lock-in and reproduce unsustainable practices in everyday life, technology and society. We aim to contribute with new narratives and representations towards a just social development within planetary boundaries.

The NORD-URB-EXP project will develop cutting-edge research on experimentation as an urban planning paradigm, with emphasis on streets and public spaces. A key challenge under UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 is reducing the social injustice and environmental externalities caused by the dominance of private car use, which from a utopian perspective includes possible transitions towards 'post-car' cities.

We need to rapidly reduce the environmental impact of consumption. However, who is called to action and what that action consists of differs. This doctoral project critically explores different framings of “sustainable” consumption initiatives and how policy and planning could support intrinsic values as part of sustainability transitions.