Strategisk kommunal planering som förhindrar fortsatt bostadssegregation : Utmaningar och möjligheter inom planeringsstrategier

Sammanfattning: Housing segregation implicates that people with socioeconomic similarities live in the same residential area, which divides the society in a way that creates unequal childhood and living conditions. Research shows that the segregation, despite continued engagement from authorities and other organisations, is increasing. A major part of the efforts against housing segregation has been focusing on individual issues and solutions. Research shows that housing segregation however should be tackled through concurrent working arrangements regarding two concepts,structural barriers and individual preferences. The purpose of this study is to show how municipal planning strategies contribute to counteract housing segregation. The goal is to compare municipal strategy documents to scientific research in the area. In that way the hope is to chart how possibilities and challenges regarding structural barriers as well as individual preferences can be taken into account to optimize the continued work forward.The study is delimited to the two largest municipalities of the Gävleborg county in Sweden. The major method used was a qualitative content analysis of three subjectively chosen municipal strategy documents. The analysis was prepared by producing key concepts based on underlying causes to housing segregation according to scientific research in the field. The key concepts were divided into several key words. The qualitative content analysis was then accomplished by reading the documents and gather all relevant text units according to the key concepts and key words. The second part of the method was about compiling the strategies into SWOT analyses where strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats were summarized. The results showed that strategies by both Sandviken´s and Gävle´s municipalites contain efforts regarding structural barriers as well as individual preferences. In the discussion the strategies were connected to the scientific research in the area. That generated a discussion about how segregation is an issue of complexity making it complicated to concretise both in relation to causes and solutions. Even the most thought out strategy can lead to unexpected results which some of them are only possible to evaluate decades later. Therefore, the conclusion was that there is no complete and full answer to the research question about how municipal planning strategies contribute to counteract housing segregation. However, both municipalities show indication of a decrease of housing segregation, based on today´s research.To further develop this study, interviewing representatives from the municipals could have explored the strategies from another angle. Comparing representative’s approaches to the document´s approaches towards the subject could have enriched the results, but also made it possible to raise the question of the document´s silence.Keywords: Segregation, housing segregation, physical planning, mixed landuse