It is argued in this paper that the orthodox sustainable transport vision leads to the further empowerment of technocratic and elitist groups in society while simultaneously contributing to the further disempowerment of those marginalized social groups who were already bearing the burden of the environmental problems resulting from a troubled transport system. Scalar redefinitions of the transport problem play a prominent role in the twin processes of empowerment and disempowerment. Furthermore, the contributions of spatial planning and neo-classical transport economics to the sustainable transport discourses will be critically investigated. The issues of transport inequality and transport poverty should be re-inserted into the dominant transport policy debates and practices.

While the technological development of vehicles and fuels is not adequate to meet current climate mitigation targets, infrastructure development also plays an important role in transforming the transport system. Previous studies have argued that conventional infrastructure planning is incapable of implementing climate mitigation. The aim of the paper is to provide insights into power means and mechanisms that counteract integration of climate mitigation targets in infrastructure planning. This is done by an in-depth case study of current Swedish national transport planning. This case provides a rich illustration of a situation with high political ambitions regarding climate mitigation on the one hand, and power mechanisms and resistance with regard to climate goals during the planning process on the other. The case is analysed using the perspective of power circuits and shows how forecasting works as an obligatory passage point, sorting in and out which analyses will be part of the decision-making material. Analyses which do not fit the forecasting model are dismissed from planning. The conclusion is that as long as the transport infrastructure planning practice is dependent on forecasting as the only central analysis there will be difficulties in changing the scope of infrastructure planning and making climate goals central for transport planning.

In this article I investigate spatial scale as an aspect that needs to be more carefully addressed in the discussion and planning of ‘sustainable urban forms’. Focusing on the Malmö-Lund region in Sweden, I discuss problems of scale as related to the new take on sustainability in Malmö planning documents, especially the update of the Malmö comprehensive plan from 2005. The paper is divided into three sections. First, I discuss the concept and problem of spatial scale, contextualising it in theory as well as in recent discussions on urban transformations. Second, I briefly discuss the discourse of sustainable urban forms, pointing out some scale-related issues that need to be more carefully addressed. In the third and main section of the article, I investigate plans and projects for urban development in Malmö, focusing and elaborating on spatial scale and discussing the findings in terms of three kinds of scale stabilisation: in terms of territory, size and hierarchy. The article concludes with a call for further work for the possibilities of a more dynamic and multi-scalar approach in urban planning.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to a refined perspective on how the practices of everyday life can challenge existing spatial scale relations, as well as produce new ones, and how this in turn can be addressed by planning. The investigation is based on a discussion of empirical studies dealing with the role of migrants in processes of place-making and urban transformation. In the article, we look particularly at how migrants challenge more established scale relations of certain places and cities in Nordic countries. We illustrate how cases of heterogenic place-making contest established urban scales such as the home, the neighbourhood and the city, and suggest a series of modalities that may be used in the context of urban planning and design, to describe and study these processes in greater detail. The modalities include the notions of extension and compression, up- and downscaling, side-stepping and a multiple order of scales.

The aim of this article is to describe and investigate how the Swedish escalation in consumption and restructuring of retail spaces are dealt with in Swedish spatial planning. In the first part of this article, we present a history and an overview of the Swedish retail evolution. The major changes are presented, followed by a short discussion of some main actors in this evolution. In the second part of this article, we focus on policies and the planning process, discussing how the municipalities are expected to fulfil their tasks as the agents responsible for physical planning of commercial centres in the light of the ongoing rapid escalation of retail planning projects. Recent guidelines from the national and regional authorities for improvement of the current situation are analysed. Finally, we discuss recent research maintaining that a new form for project planning is emerging within commercial planning. This new form sometimes bypasses traditional planning practices and thus requires new instruments and organizations for a more effective planning of urban retail.

Review of: Translocal geographies : spaces, places, connections / edited by Katherine Brickell, Ayona Datta. - 2011. Farnham: Ashgate - ISBN: 978-0-7546-7838-0

Due to the fragmented organizational landscape characterizing public transport, it is important to study and explore how regional governance of public transport adapts to national institutional reforms. By employing the term ‘governance cultures’ to a comparative case study of regional public transport planning in Sweden, we contribute to theories of governance by cultural sensitization. Combining governance theory with cultural analysis, we apply a cultural perspective to understand the two cases. We conclude that public transport planning in the Stockholm region is defined by ‘negotiations’ between stakeholders, whereas in the Västra Götaland region it is characterized by a governance culture of ‘collaboration’. The evidence from our case studies emphasizes the importance of understanding local governance practices as situated in cultural contexts as well as of viewing governance cultures as an important factor affecting the purpose, degree and outcomes of collaboration in planning practices. 

In this contribution, the new position of the city in the urban political economy will be considered in the context of the shifting realities that characterize an increasingly hybridizing and cosmopolitan global (dis)order. We shall argue that globalization is paralleled by a restructuring of the city and with an increasing importance of the urban in a context of intensifying inter-urban competition. The success of cities is dependent on their local 'embeddedness' in institutional and other networks of power. Attention will be paid to the role of local elites and to the need to forge 'growth coalitions'. We shall conclude that the formation of an inclusive and cohesive growth coalition is a key condition for the future development of Brussels in a context of intense inter-urban competition. However, this poses a host of political problems. Not in the least, the fact the new 'glocal' elites often refuse to partake in local institutional or political networks. The commitment to place that invariably comes with a greater 'local' institutional embedding which may militate against their global strategies and aspirations. The key question for 'local' politics then becomes one of how to forge networks and linkages that force 'glocal' elites to become inserted actively in the regional armatures of governance.

There is an increased need of understanding organizational and institutional underpinnings of firms’ global knowledge search. This paper addresses thick and diversified RIS in two different territorial contexts and explores firms’ use of physical and virtual space in their search of innovation relevant knowledge. Through interviews with ICT and new media SMEs from Scandinavia (Oslo, Malmö) and Beijing, findings show that low-cost and virtual search space is very important for innovation; furthermore, regional, global and virtual space co-evolve and mutually reinforce each other. Global search strategies differ between the two contexts, emphasizing the importance of a regional institutional-organizational framing supporting trust, collaboration and motivation for global search. In order to reap the benefits of the regional-global-virtual dynamics, being thick and diversified is not enough to have global reach and attractiveness.