Smart housing and its consequences for tenants is still a largely absent field in smart city and housing research. Departing from the EU-funded project GrowSmarter, 2015-2019 and a renovation project of a 1960s housing complex in Stockholm, the article investigates tensions around retrofitting older apartment blocks to make them climate smart. The article presents the argument that top-down approaches of EU-funded climate-smart city interventions leave minimal space for different stakeholders to steer the process and limits the tenants' role and influence. Researching the implementation of smart technology in housing renovations and how it ultimately effects tenants' everyday lives, the article adds to previous knowledge of uneven development of climate smart solutions through bringing in the outcomes of housing renovation projects, and how 'actual smart cities' are played out within the housing sector. The article brings together research on climate urbanism, housing studies and smart cities with the purpose to understand the scalar politics of smart implementations and the effects on tenants.

In this chapter, the authors discuss the historical development and the current state of the housing and welfare regimes in the Nordic countries, using Sweden and Norway as our main cases. The two neighbouring countries on the Scandinavian peninsula are often classified as generous social democratic welfare regimes with a high level of universalism and de-commodification. In the first postwar decades, however, Sweden and Norway chose different paths in the sphere of housing policy. In Sweden, there are four main forms of tenure. Ownership rights (owner-occupied housing) are mainly enjoyed in single-family houses. The Norwegian housing regime is a liberal and selective sector of what is still a generous welfare regime with many universal benefits and services. Sweden and Norway both experienced a gradual “system shift” in housing policy in the 1980s, 1990s and after the millennium. 

How can struggles for housing justice act as a lens to expand housingresearchers’ understanding of the rental crisis and of the systems thatunderpin this crisis? By presenting papers from Sweden, Spain,Greece, the UK, and Australia this special issue contributes withknowledge on how housing struggles can inform new theoreticaland methodological approaches within the field of housing studies.In turn, the SI presents three tenets that together form a frameworkfor housing scholars: institutionalization as politics, tenants as poli-tical actors, and learning housing justice. We argue that it is crucialfor housing scholars to recenter on struggles for housing justice intheir readings of contemporary housing systems.

Sweden has seen a rise in homelessness alongside its strained housing market. References are increasingly being made to structural problems with housing provision, rather than individual issues. Housing has been organized through the local social services, which are responsible for supporting homeless people. With a foundation in housing studies, this article analyzes the Swedish social services’ challenges and actions in a time in which affordable housing is in shortage, and housing inequality a reality, through the lens of social services. The focus is on the intersection between the regular housing market and housing provision (primary welfare system), the social services needs‐tested support (secondary welfare system), and the non‐profit and for‐profit organizations (tertiary welfare system), with emphasis on the first two. The article is based on interviews with people working for the City of Malmö and illustrates how the housing shortage problem is moved around within the welfare system whilst also showing that social services’ support for homeless individuals appears insufficient. Social services act as a “first line” gatekeeper for those who have been excluded from the regular housing market. Moreover, recently implemented restrictions aim to make sure that the social services do not act as a “housing agency,” resulting in further exclusion from the housing market. The article highlights how the policies of the two welfare systems interact with and counteract each other and finally illustrates how homeless individuals fall between them. It highlights the need to link housing and homelessness in both research and practice to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of housing markets and how homelessness is sustained.

Precarious housing research has become increasingly relevant to previous welfare housing contexts, such as Sweden. In the 1990s, Swedish housing became gradually market-oriented, which induced a shortage of affordable rental housing and increased housing costs in all major cities. This article presents the results from interviews with individuals about their experiences of the unequal housing market in the city of Malmö, Sweden. The article furthers knowledge of the lived experience of housing precariousness in the Global North. The narratives from the housing precariat are analysed through the lens of housing inequalities, and the analysis theoretically adds to ‘research on critical geography of precarity. The article aims to illustrate the consequences of the shift from a general welfare approach of housing to an individualized and neoliberal housing market. In particular, this article adds insights on the gendered and racialized aspects that affect housing precariousness. 

Drawing on (earlier) feminist urban critique, this chapter discuss what smart city strategies can tell us about the contemporary urban conditions and social relations. Through analyzing underlying (gendered) assumptions and understandings of everyday life the chapter aims to expose which power relations that are being produced, or reproduced, when tech-companies enter planning and manifest digital technology in the city. By bringing in feminist theory, the aim is to shed light on questions around urban knowledge production, representation and actual outcomes; who is invited to the discourse and who is talking to whom? Whose reality is being manifested through the smart city? 

För många av oss är det självklart att ha någonstans att bo. Men hur lätt är det att hitta boende för unga, nyanlända eller personer som av olika anledningar har sämre ekonomi? Bostaden och boendet har stor betydelse för jämlika levnadsvillkor och våra framtidsmöjligheter. Grunden för den sociala bostadspolitiken är att alla ska ha rätt till en god bostad till ett rimligt pris. Bostadsförsörjningslagen innebär dock inte någon ovillkorlig rätt till bostad för enskilda medborgare, men vilket ansvar har egentligen stat och kommun? Sedan 1990-talet har förändringar i politiken gjort att många hyresrätter omvandlats till bostadsrätter samtidigt som allt färre hyresrätter har byggts. Hur har det påverkat vem som får bo? 

Utställningen tar upp frågor kring hur boende påverkar individers levnadssituation och hur olika boendeformer som hyresrätt, bostadsrätt och andrahandsboende påverkar både individ och samhälle. 

Forskarnas galleri gestaltar pågående och aktuell forskning vid Malmö universitet. I utställningen “Hem ljuva hem” har biblioteket samarbetat med Martin Grander och Carina Listerborn från institutionen för urbana studier.

Systemskiftet har haft ett stort genomslag när det kommer till bostadsmarknaden och bostadspolitiken. Transformationerna har varit omfattande vad gäller den avregleringen av bostadstadssektorn och det offentligas roll, med ett närmast absolut tillbakadragande från statens sida. Det finns i dagsläget ingen vare sig offentlig eller privat instans som tar ansvar för de bostadssociala frågorna på statlig nivå, medan manöverutrymmet är begränsat för kommunerna. Samtidigt som stat och kommun kapitulerar i sitt sociala ansvar ökar bostadsojämlikheten och krisen för de som efterfrågar bostäder till rimliga priser intensifieras. Den allmännyttiga hyresrätten, som historiskt varit arbetarklassens viktigaste marknad, har försvagats och beståndet har till och med minskat i antal från systemskiftets början i tidigt 1990-tal.

Research on displacement has a long trajectory in Western geography and urban studies. In a Swedish context theory formation around displacement re-emerged in the 2010s as a response to an increasingly heated housing market, increased gentrification and growing homelessness, and as a consequence of ‘renoviction’ processes. Learning from empirical research in Sweden, the Nordic experiences differ from the Anglo-American context, and set ground for a theoretical discussion on how to understand the specificities of displacement processes in (post-)welfare societies. In this chapter we investigate some Swedish manifestations of displacement that cannot easily be grasped by conceptual apparatuses often developed in an Anglo-American context. The process of displacement in a Swedish (and Nordic) context is often more indirect and slower but its eventual outcomes have the same damaging effects on its victims. The chapter provides both an historical and contemporary view of Swedish displacement processes and practices, and we argue that we cannot uncritically import a conceptual apparatus that grew out of other socio-spatial contexts and develop particular understandings of displacement based on Nordic empirical observations.

Boken Bostadsmanifest – 22 krav för framtidens hem samlar 25 forskare och aktivister som vill bidra med att skapa en bostadsmarknad för alla. Deras 22 krav utgår från kunskap och erfarenhet från både forskning och aktivism, där författarna efterlyser en aktiv kommunal och statlig socialt inkluderande bostadspolitik.

Boken ska inspirera medborgare, politiker och aktivister med nya erfarenheter, forskningsresultat och visioner i bostadsfrågan. Kraven placerar hemmet i fokus som en viktig plats i alla människors liv. Bostaden är mer än en marknadsvara, den är en rättighet.

Bostadsmanifest är en uppföljning och utveckling av boken 13 Myter om bostadsfrågan (2016), författad av forskarkollektivet CRUSH – Critical Urban Sustainability Hub.

Nu har fler vänner bjudits in till att medverka till detta mångsidiga manifest där steget tas från kritiska reflektioner till visioner om en framtida välkomnande stads- och bostadsplanering.

Bostadsmanifest – 22 krav för framtidens hem är illustrerad av seriekonstnären Daria Bogdanska, författare till den hyllade serieromanen Wage Slaves. Boken är formgiven av Magnus Frederiksen.

Det är många som förutspår att ny digital teknik kommer att forma och kanske även styra framtidens stadsutveckling. Trenden med smarta städer skapar både utmaningar, och möjligheter, i relation till medborgardeltagande. Möjligheten att samla in och systematisera data, utveckla rationella och effektiva system uppdaterar staden som en maskin. Smarta städer handlar dock inte bara om teknik, utan förändrar även ekonomi, arkitektur, planering, ekologi, politik, sociala och kulturella relationer. Hur den digitala tekniken kommer att påverka framtidens urbana liv beror på hur kommuner väljer att hantera den nya teknikens möjligheter. Demokratifrågor blir synnerligen viktiga att beakta då utvecklingen framförallt drivs på av privata globala teknikföretag som får tillträde till lokal stadsplanering och i förlängningen människors vardagsliv. I konkurrensen mellan städer välkomnas ofta sådana satsningar av kommunledningar som en möjlighet att hamna högt på rankinglistor och med en förhoppning om att skapa arbetstillfällen. En del städer, som t.ex. Barcelona och Madrid, använder digitala plattformar som stöd för medborgare att lämna in förslag, debattera eller påverka budgetbeslut. Genom sina mobiltelefonen kan medborgarna stödja eller kritisera förslag. I Sverige samlar Smart City Sweden olika initiativ och där framgår att många svenska städer har fokus på klimatsmarta lösningar inom transport och boende. Men med alla inneboende otydligheter, oklara relationer och outredda risker är det viktigt att planeringsforskare och praktiker är redo inför de utmaningar som uppstår när nya privata aktörer vill medverka till att forma framtidens stadsplanering. Utvecklingen av smarta städer går fort och forskare menar att vi idag närmar oss en tredje fas av smarta städer. Den första vågen fokuserade på digitala tekniker för styrning, den andra på digitala plattformar för olika former av service och den tredje vågen som nu börjar skönjas fokuserar på själva utvecklandet av stadens mark (Sadowski, 2020). Den här artikeln kommer därför att handla om ett sådant exempel. Inför den här tredje vågen av smarta städer är det viktigt att lära sig av erfarenheterna från pionjärprojekt och se hur projektet mottogs av medborgarna. 

Several urban scholars have stressed the difficulties of locating and capturing the smart city, while at the same time smart city initiatives are becoming normalized and integrated in urban policy and practice. Besides the focus on technological innovations within information and communication technology, artificial intelligence, internet of things, new infrastructures and Big Data, smart cities are also about economic, sociocultural, architectural, ecological and political changes. As Engelbert et al. (2018) argue, citizens represent different interests and needs that are rarely stated in smart city discourse. According to Sangiuliano (2014), smart cities are generally not attentive to gender inequalities and, as Rose (2016) has pointed out, smart city conferences – both academic and professional- are dominated by men. Feminist urban scholars, scrutinizing patriarchal urban development, raise questions of how to develop an inclusive smart city and whether it is possible to claim the concept of smart cities for a more inclusive city. In this article, adding to earlier feminist urban theorists and intersectional approaches, we want to turn to the methodological challenges on how to investigate and ‘unpack’ power relations within smart city visions and materializations. We argue that there is a need for an increased methodological awareness within the smart city research in order to include social difference.

Det här kapitlet analyserar trygghetsfrågan i relation till bostaden och synliggör vad otrygghet kan innebära på en dysfunktionell bostadsmarknad. Trygghet är i detta sammanhang en konkret och materiell fråga för individen. I fokus är hemmets betydelse för upplevd trygghet och hur den tryggheten utmanas på grund av brist på bostäder till rimliga priser

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.

This book examines reasons, processes and consequences of housing displacement in different geographical contexts. It explores displacement as a prime act of housing injustice – a central issue in urban injustices.

With international case studies from the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, India, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Hungary, this book explores how housing displacement processes are more diverse and mutate into more new forms than have been acknowledged in the literature. It emphasizes a need to look beyond the existing rich gentrification literature to give primacy to researching processes of displacement to understand the socio-spatial change in the city. Although it is empirically and methodologically demanding for several reasons, studying displacement highlights gentrification’s unjust nature as well as the unjust housing policies in cities and neighborhoods that are simply not undergoing gentrification. The book also demonstrates how expulsion, though under-researched, has become a vital component of contemporary advanced capitalism, and how a focus on gentrification has hindered a potential focus on its flipside of ‘displacement’, as well as the study of the occurrence of poor cleansing from a long-term historical perspective.

This book offers interdisciplinary perspectives on housing displacement to academics and researchers in the fields of urban studies, housing, citizenship and migration studies interested in housing policies and governance practices at the urban scale.

This chapter suggests that the systematic ways in which governments and landlords seek to remove unwanted segments of the population from (inner) cities or prevent them from moving in, with or without subsequent gentrification, is the defining factor of contemporary urban injustice. While displacement became less of an issue in some of the literature of gentrification, critical scholars have brought gentrification, both empirically and conceptually, to new terrains. The dominance of the concept of gentrification has not only hindered a potential focus on its flipside displacement but it has also hindered the study of the occurrence of poor cleansing from a long-term historical perspective. The chapter aims to further our understanding of the underlying power relations. It believes a significant enrichment of the concept of displacement is necessary for reasons. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Guy Baeten, Carina Listerborn, Maria Persdotter and Emil Pull; individual chapters, the contributors.

This chapter argues that measures herald a new era of urban population management and urban renewal in Sweden. It finds the term 'banishment' particularly useful to grasp the new urban renewal tactics that are unfolding in Landskrona. Based on an empirical study of Landskrona's rental policies, the chapter aims to develop banishment as a concept to capture a certain variation of displacement that is currently difficult to place in the available conceptual apparatus. It argues elsewhere that the reluctance of municipalities to accept citizens on low income may lead to the emergence of 'city-less citizens' who have nowhere left to go since no municipality is prepared to enrol them. Banishment may not have immediate tangible effects, but it forces the banned to consider whether they are worthy of being in a place and whether it is worth fighting for it.

Bostadsmarknaden i Sverige kan beskrivas på två helt olika sätt. Den erbjuder å ena sidan attraktiva boenden där man kan välja och vraka efter egna önskemål, och å andra sidan en verklighet där man var eller varannan månad måste hitta någonstans att bo – ett rum eller en säng i andra eller tredje hand. Vi har inte en generell brist på bostäder utan en ojämlik bostadsmarknad, som leder till bostadsbrist för vissa grupper. Ojämlikheten skapar utrymme för handel med bostäder, sängar och adresser. I Bostadsojämlikhet får läsaren ta del av berättelser från bostadsmarknaden i Malmö, baserade på intervjuer med personer som har erfarenheter av att söka och hitta bostad och att skapa sig ett hem. Blicken vänds mot dem som verkligen påverkas – de boende. De måste bli legitima röster för en balanserad kunskapsutveckling inom bostadsforskningen och bostadspolitiken

In the process of turning the post-industrial city of Malmö, Sweden, into a knowledge-based, creative city, new urban planning strategies and visions are being developed. An important component of developing the “knowledge city” is the spatial conceptualization for renewal of urban life. One such concept introduced in Malmö is “the 4th urban environment” (det 4.e stadsrummet). In this article, based on critical urban studies, the development, branding, and practice of the 4th urban environment as a strategy to generate a creative economy and knowledge city is critically analyzed as part of a neoliberal planning discourse. The article raises the question, what kind of vision is “the 4th urban environment”? What is it an expression of; what does it mean for planning practice and to urban development? Contextualizing and investigating trends of neoliberal planning ideas are important to an understanding of the social and economic consequences of unequal power relations. The 4th urban environment and its application in Malmö is illustrative of existing neoliberal planning practices in a Nordic context, and in other similar economies with legacies of redistribution policies and longstanding leadership of the Social Democratic Party. This article focuses on what is articulated within discourses that re-present particular notions of space and place, to gain a better understanding of what neoliberal planning does to space.

I tretton kapitel utmanas rådande problemformuleringar om vad som utgör hindren för att skapa en mer tillgänglig bostadsmarknad och rimligare boendesituation åt alla. Är ökad marknadsekonomi lösningen på bostadsbristen? Måste vi sänka kvalitetskraven för att alla ska få tak över huvudet? Hur hänger bostadsfrågan och frågan om integration och segregation ihop? Är gentrifiering en naturlig förändring av staden? Rådande "sanningar" om fler avregleringar, lägre skatter och ökad marknadsfrihet har kommit att stå i vägen för nytänkande. Det behövs fler röster i debatten. 13 myter om bostadsfrågan ger alternativa tolkningar som kan föra in nya perspektiv på bostadskrisen. Boken ges ut av Förlag Dokument Press, med illustrationer av Sara Granér.

This article explores safety and politics of space in two ways. First, it reviews research on women’s fear and calls for safer cities, identifying four contradictions in the geography of fear discourse. Second, it elaborates on how including various forms of fear may repoliticize the contemporary depoliticized and co-opted safety discussion by focusing on sexist and racist threats rather than exclusively on the white middle classes. Here, threats to veiled Muslim women and their experiences in public spaces are, in particular, emphasized as exemplifying fears that are neglected in the safety debate. The article concludes that, rather than the whole safety issue being dismissed as ‘neoliberal’, there is an urgent need to strengthen the analysis of power and illuminate experiences of pain and fear in sexist and racist violence.

Det här är en handbok som skrivits för att användas praktiskt i kampen om hyresrättens framtid. Boken har växt fram ur gemensamma erfarenheter av att ta strid mot renoveringar med höga hyreshöjningar som följd. Det har gett oss både kunskaper om lokal organisering och en övertygelse om vikten av att hyresgäster ska ha rätt till att påverka framtiden i de bostadsområden de bor i. De senaste åren har vi kunnat se hur hyreslägenheter renoveras med omfattande hyreshöjningar som följd. Konsekvenserna har blivit att många hyresgäster har tvingats flytta, ibland från bostadsområden de bott i under lång tid, då de inte längre har råd att betala hyran. Om inte hyresgäster går samman och kräver sina rättigheter kommer inget förändras och flera tusentals människor tvingas flytta. Den här handboken ska användas som ett praktiskt verktyg för lokal organisering. Vi som har gjort den här boken är engagerade i olika rörelser, några av oss är också forskare med inriktning mot bostad- spolitik och stadsutveckling. Boken har tillkommit genom en kollektiv process, där många varit inblandade för att bidra med sina erfarenheter och perspektiv. En lista med alla medverkande inklusive de rörelser som står bakom den här boken finns lägst bak.

Encounters between strangers, as different users of public spaces, are one of the core subjects for discussion in relation to orders in the public space. The empirical material presented in this article illustrates power relations in public spaces of Sweden, which gives a specific national and nationalist framing. This article is based on interviews with 19 Muslim women, all of whom wear the hijab. The aim of this article was to illuminate the neglected violence Muslim women are exposed to and to investigate violent public encounters from the point of view of female Muslim citizens. This recounting of encounters strives to understand the ‘lived experiences of pain’ [Ahmed, S. (2001). The organisation of hate. Law and Critique, 12, 360] and what hate is doing in terms of the effects of hate crimes. First, the concept of affect and economy of hate is elaborated on, after which the meaning of violence is developed in relation to place and space. By showing how frequent such gendered and Islamophobic violence is, in its different forms, while at the same time being largely an overlooked form of violence, the empirical material implicates that such acts of everyday violence work to establish and maintain a hegemonic social, spatial and political order.

detta kapitel kommer det lokala föreningslivets betydelse för demokratiska uttryck i dess närområde belysas. Vi kommer även beskriva hur samspelet och samverkan mellan det lokala civilsamhället och den offentliga sektorn fungerar för att stärka dessa föreningar. Föreningslivet präglas av den specifika kontext de verkar i och får därmed olika karaktär beroende på varifrån de agerar. Kapitlet baseras på en studie som genomfördes år 2014 i fyra bostadsområden i Malmö (Holma och Kroksbäck) och Helsingborg (Dalhem och Drottninghög) med finansiering från Myndigheten för ungdoms- och civilsamhällesfrågor. Tyngdpunkten i kapitlet ligger på att återge röster och

The city of Landskrona in the South of Sweden has never fully recovered from a phase of heavy deindustrialization during the 1970s and 1980s. After years of socially inspired plans and projects, the local authorities have now decided to shift gear and tackle problems of criminality, unemployment and social exclusion through a renovation and eviction plan of the inner city. The basic thought behind the plan is to radically alter the social fabric of the inner city through major alterations of the housing market. The “Crossroads Centre/East” plan proposes that the municipal authorities, together with five real estate companies, form a new company to renovate houses, convert rental apartments to condominiums, demolish and rebuild. One hundred million Swedish Crowns are invested in the company – 95 million will come from municipal funds. The proposal in the City Council, led by the Liberal Party, was supported by 49 out of 51 Councilors, including the Social Democrats and the extreme right-wing Sweden Democrats. The aim is not hidden: welfare recipients should be actively steered away from the city center and make place for a (imaginary) wealthy middle class. The overall objective of the company is “to improve both the physical and socio-economic status in Landskrona’s central and eastern parts." To understand this urban renewal proposal, we would like to present Landskrona as an example of a watershed in Swedish housing politics that forces us to consider: 1) the nature of gentrification processes in Scandinavia – from gentle to brutal; 2) the shift in viewing affordable housing as a problem, rather than a solution; and 3) the possible introduction of ‘renoviction’ in Sweden.

Denna antologi är ett resultat av ett gemensamt arbete mellan forskare och tjänstemän för att diskutera möjligheterna och formerna för det praktiska arbetet kring hållbar stadsutveckling. År 2010 utlystes medel inom programmet Samordnad stadsutveckling - en förutsättning för hållbarhet, vilket har finansierat forskningsprojektet Omvandling av fragmenterade städer. En studie av att integrera hållbarhetsmål genom urbana rörelsestråk, med finansiering från FORMAS och RAÄ för att under tre år fördjupa sig i hållbar stadsutveckling och inte minst kring sociala utmaningar. I fokus för projektet är Malmö stads satsning på att knyta ihop de östra och västra delarna av Malmö genom förstärkandet av ett stråk. Antologin presenterar både konkreta resultat av dessa satsningar, och reflektioner kring de processer som initierades. http://www.mah.se/Forskning/omforskning/Organisation/Profiler/Forskningsprofil-Urbana-studier/Funktioner-och-tjanster/Skriftserie---MAPIUS/

This article presents results from two case studies of marginalised housing areas on the outskirts of two major cities in Sweden. The areas have been analysed through the lens of glocalisation of the everyday lives. The aim is to illustrate and gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of, and relationship between, place, gender and transnationalism. The article contests the simplified image of migrant women in these marginalised areas as local-bound and isolated. It analyses their everyday lives as spaces of glocality, with a particular focus on local and global networks, local and global meeting places, and relationships to local authorities. The aim is to disseminate new knowledge about the complexities of these women's lives in a global–local context, which also has implications for the theoretical concept of glocality. Through the concept of glocality, the beneficial as well as the negative aspects of these women's lives in marginalised neighbourhoods are illustrated.

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