"Mot en socio-ekologisk stadsutvecklingsprocess" - En studie av potentialen för social och ekologisk hållbarhet vid energirenovering och stadsutveckling i miljonprogrammets bostadsområden

Sammanfattning: Research indicates that social and climate policy are highly interdependent and should thus be perceived and practiced as a joint policy field to avoid conflictual outcomes and to enhance potential synergies. Such an integration of policy is highly relevant in urban planning. The multi-family dwellings of the Swedish Million homes program face extensive renovation and energy retrofitting needs to comply with national and international comfort- and energy reduction targets. Recent studies show that a renovation in line with these targets will lead to substantial increases in household rent, putting a financial burden on the socio-economically disadvantaged residents that mainly resides in these dwellings. This thesis examines how municipal and real estate actors addresses the task to enhance ecological and social sustainability in an integrated “eco-social” manner in a comparative case study of two million homes programmes in the cities of Malmö and Gothenburg. The objective is operationalized by creating an analytical framework which is applied to the empirical evidence consisting of 12 Semi-structured interviews with participants from the municipality, real estate companies and tenants’ association. The interviews were conducted to acquire actor-specific perspectives on how social and ecological sustainability goals is being pursued and integrated in the development and energy retrofitting process. The results indicate that several initiatives within the development programme contributes to both social and ecological sustainability simultaneously. However, both municipal bodies lack an outspoken ambition to address social and ecological challenges in an integrated manner and the occurrence of “eco-social” connections are mainly positive externalities from social development initiatives. Furthermore, the results demonstrate how renovation and energy retrofitting might be conflictual to social development goals and exacerbate social exclusion and segregation by resulting in substantial rent increase. But also, how real estate companies might use energy retrofitting as a tool to enhance social sustainability and thus meet these development challenges in an integrated manner.