Stockholm on the edge : Defining quality in the red-green interface of Årsta

Sammanfattning: One of Stockholms great qualities is the large amount of green areas in the city. Yet the city needs to densify. Such is the case in the residential neighbourhood Årsta, where the popular Årstaskogen, an urban woodland, may have to make way for new housing, meaning a redefinition of the red-green interface of the area. This study involves a series of methods (literature review, document analysis, semi-structured interviews and research-by-design) through which the definition of quality in this interface is defined. Typologies of both interfaces and the motivators of quality in both residential neighbourhoods and urban woodlands were created. These typologies were linked to the qualitative perceptions of the green-red interface of the interviewees, and some were translated into visualised design approaches. The research showed that perceptions of quality are multi-interpretable and can be linked to certain types of interfaces in multiple ways, making a definition of quality arbitrary in this case.