- Lund, Skane Lan, Sweden
- London School of Economics, Geography, AlumnusLund University, Department of History, Graduate Student, and 2 moreadd
- Right to the city, Urban Planning, Urban Regeneration, Urban Commons, Sociology of Knowledge, Epistemology of the Social Sciences, and 19 moreAnthropology of the State, Biopolitics, Subalternity, Subaltern Agency, History of Capitalism, Class, Social Movements, Squatting, Anti-Fascism, Urban History, Protest, Violence, Labour history, Autonomous Marxism, Social reproduction, Neoliberalism, Social Activism, Commons, Protest Event Analysis, and Wendy Brownedit
This thesis studies the complicated relationship between postwar social governance and neoliberalism. It looks at urban planning in particular because this is a key field of postwar social regulation as well as a strategic site of... more
This thesis studies the complicated relationship between postwar social governance and neoliberalism. It looks at urban planning in particular because this is a key field of postwar social regulation as well as a strategic site of neoliberal reforms. The thesis examines urban planning paperwork from the Swedish city Malmö dating from the mid-1980s until 2015 with a particular focus on Folkets park, a green space in central Malmö. The main argument is that social regulation is neoliberalized, rather than ‘rolled-back’. This process cannot, the thesis argues, be reduced to a rapid burst of neoliberal political decrees in response to an exceptional moment of economic crisis. Instead, Malmö’s social neoliberalism was created by a slow process of re-articulation rife with tensions where the contingent outcome of continually erupting contradictions profoundly shaped the bureaucratic formation that emerged. Social technologies of rule were in Malmö meticulously repurposed for new ends and neoliberal technologies painstakingly grafted onto established bureaucratic routines over the course of three decades. Neoliberal urban planning was in Malmö not only shaped by residual social regulation, but also by how neoliberalism provoked new contradictions and inherited remnants of the postwar city’s urban spaces. This study of Malmö invites asking further questions about the continuing role of social modes of governing in neoliberal formations and suggests that neoliberal governance might be less vulnerable to a return of social regulation than some argue.
Research Interests: Urban History, Urban Planning, Scandinavia, Urban Studies, Michel Foucault, and 20 moreCritical Geography, Neoliberalism, Human Capital, Biopolitics, Social Production of Space, Urban And Regional Planning, Social sustainability, Stuart Hall, History of Social Policy and the Welfare State, Social Democracy, Sweden, Social Engineering, Bureaucracy, New Labour, History of Sweden, Urban Commons, History of Urban Planning, The Commons, Postwar Europe, and Swedish Model
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This article takes the work of David Harvey as an example of the valuable research being done in the space between geography and history. Harvey's influence is described as being significant in the canonical debates within geography that... more
This article takes the work of David Harvey as an example of the valuable research being done in the space between geography and history. Harvey's influence is described as being significant in the canonical debates within geography that have had a far-reaching impact outside that particular field. His production is summarized from three different perspectives. First, his contribution to the theoretical debates in the 1970s and 1980s on the spatialization of Marxist thought, initially proposed by Henri Lefebvre, is discussed. Through the discussion of capital as a system that defers social instability through spatial production, Harvey has provided a range of concepts that have proved useful in both qualitative and quantitative research. As an empiricist, Harvey's findings illustrate the benefits of an approach informed by the theoretical perspectives that he and other spatially interested social theorists have developed. For instance, his work has opened up new avenues of inquiry through his study of cities and urban space in some of its modern and postmodern variations. Finally, Harvey's role as a public intellectual is analysed. While his position as a prominent and much quoted academic has undoubtedly ensured that the ideas he is associated with have circulated among social movements, it appears that it is his more open essays on the right to the city and the financial crisis, and not his more complex work, that has caught the public's imagination. This observation underscores the important role academics can play in the discussion of social questions, but also the limitations of repackaging complex issues in politically useful terms, and the vigilance needed by those who attempt to navigate these two modes of important knowledge.
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In this book chapter we will show how anti-fascists from the region successfully challenged fascist spatial claims in a series of confrontations around a yearly commemorative nationalist march with a strong neo-Nazi presence in the small... more
In this book chapter we will show how anti-fascists from the region successfully challenged fascist spatial claims in a series of confrontations around a yearly commemorative nationalist march with a strong neo-Nazi presence in the small university town of Lund in southernmost Sweden between 1991 and 2008. In this context, we explore how spatial claims are made and challenged as historically constructed and, parallel to the argument of Tilly and Tarrow concerning repertoires of contention, are shaped relationally in the dynamics between movements and authorities. We will also explore the dynamics between different types of fascist and anti-fascist spatial claim-making and how different tactics have specific vulnerabilities that may be exploited by adversaries. Based on our results, we want to suggest a typology of three different ways of challenging fascist claims – the blockade, the turf war and the disruption of space – and that these challenges may be understood as the product of struggles between anti-fascists, fascists and the police. These different repertoires of spatial claim-making are to some degree a product of local conditions, but we suggest that these categories are useful when it comes to exploring anti-fascist spatial strategies in other temporal and geographical contexts. Finally, we want to argue that these different kinds of space are torn between producing and disrupting the street as either public space or territorial space, and we further suggest that fascist claims appear capable of shifting the attention between these two modes of spatial politics.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Race and Racism, Fascism, Social Movements (Political Science), Racism, and 12 moreScandinavian history, Spatial Politics, Scandinavian Studies, Swedish History, Protest Movements, Contentious Politics, History of Fascism, Antifascism, Antiracism, Street Politics, Social Movements and Contentious Politics, and History of Fascism and Antifascism
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This chapter addresses how shared experiences of action enable social move- ments to form new contentious performances. Departing from the discussion about the interpretative work of “transformative events”, we want to show how such... more
This chapter addresses how shared experiences of action enable social move- ments to form new contentious performances. Departing from the discussion about the interpretative work of “transformative events”, we want to show how such events can be understood as shaped by experiences temporarily connected across time and space that are combined to form new modes of acting. Experiences of events where new modes of acting are tried can act as a powerful cultural resource, enabling a movement to eventually establish new contentious performances if recalled and repeated over time.
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Review of William Davies' "The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition".
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There is something troubling about the persistent debates about social exclusion. Focus on drawing the inclusion-exclusion line seems to make it difficult to gauge a critical understanding of that which is 'included' by social... more
There is something troubling about the persistent debates about social exclusion. Focus on drawing the inclusion-exclusion line seems to make it difficult to gauge a critical understanding of that which is 'included' by social institutions. Simon Winlow and Steven Hall's recent intervention in this debate is a welcome contribution because it refuses this logic, instead focusing on the stakes of social regulation for both included and excluded groups. Taking this step back from the inclusion-exclusion binary opens up a very different, and very productive, approach both in terms of a critical policy review and the academic arguments it makes. Rethinking social exclusion is driven by a profound lack of satisfaction with perspectives that situate the most precarious sections of the working class as outside the social. The book swiftly dismisses what it takes to be the moralism of three dominant traditions labouring with the notion of social exclusion: conservative, left-liberal and social democratic perspectives. One could perhaps go as far as saying that Winlow and Hall declare war on the entire field they are engaging with, complaining that it is theoretically unstimulating, overly empirical and obsessed with shallow policy fixes, thus leaving systemic injustice in place. Recent academic and political preoccupation with the notion of social exclusion itself is accused of being superficial, addressing effects rather than the causes of deprivation and marginality. Winlow and Hall's response, following a broadly but at times unorthodox Marxist script, is certainly effective in that it clearly offers an alternative to the type of academic project they are trying to frame as obsessively safe and shallow. The book makes a good case for studies that dare to be more theoretical by placing the mechanisms and processes that produce social exclusion at the centre, rather than taking these as given. The argument advanced in Rethinking social exclusion proceeds through a series of short and easily digested chapters, each introducing a key discussion on social policy and social exclusion. The reader is first familiarized with recent debates in European social sciences. Then comes a critique of Charles Murray's Losing ground (1984), a foundational text for American neoliberal reformers. After this follow two brief chapters trying to tie together post-crash economics with neoliberal philanthropy and to reflect on the post-political predicaments after the neoliberal turn.
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The stakes of grasping how the far Right operates have not been higher for a long time. Hard Right racism is certainly nothing new, but a decade of third way neoliberal consensus gradually collapsing has left a vacuum that outright... more
The stakes of grasping how the far Right operates have not been higher for a long time. Hard Right racism is certainly nothing new, but a decade of third way neoliberal consensus gradually collapsing has left a vacuum that outright fascists are scrambling to fill. The analyses of critical geographers have much to offer in this urgent situation, where forging antifascist politics to defend democracy and the populations that fascists target has become a political priority. Geographers might help to critically dismantle the spatial foundations and implications of resurgent fascist politics. Critical geography can also make important contributions to an emerging history of the antifascist present by highlighting the translocal connections of the European antifascism much ongoing scholarship studies, unpacking the spatilities of movements often framed as a continuation of national resistance to 1930s and 1940s Nazism. This might involve looking at the decisive role played by diasporic communities and anticolonial radicals in the reinventions of European antifascism from the 1960s onwards, but also the more contemporary modes of translation and travel of ideas and practices to new situations evident in recent American mobilizations inspired by waning European tactics. Lastly, as I will argue in this essay, the geographic community can also contribute in a more concrete sense by mapping the spatial repertoires of fascist movements. Analysing the spatial practices and imaginaries of fascist street politics might prove a particularly useful way to help uncover vulnerabilities that antifascist movements in all their diversity might take advantage of.
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Essay from the program folder for "Violence and learning" ["Våld och pedagogik"], a reinterpretation of Bertholt Brecht's "Die Maßnahme" written and directed by John Hanse and Henrik Bromander.
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Hastigt nedskriven analys av polisupploppet 23 augusti 2014 på Limhamn publicerad i det Malmöbaserade antirasistiska onliemagsinet Al-tid. Artikeln försöker förklara vad som tillsynes framstår som en paradox: att polisens våld mot... more
Hastigt nedskriven analys av polisupploppet 23 augusti 2014 på Limhamn publicerad i det Malmöbaserade antirasistiska onliemagsinet Al-tid. Artikeln försöker förklara vad som tillsynes framstår som en paradox: att polisens våld mot vänsterradikala demonstranter i Malmö/Lund de senaste 20 dryga åren tenderar att vara som grövst när det ritkas mot ickevåldsprotester. Utifrån en skissartad beskrivning av den regionala prägeln på den autonoma vänsterns konfliktrepertoar och Skåne-polisens Police Order Managment System, förankrad i tidigare forskning, argumenterar texten för att polisens sätt att hantera ickevålds-protester arrangerade av specifcikt den autonoma vänstern ofta leder till ett mycket stort våldsutövande mot demonstranter. Artikeln avslutas genom att konstatera att detta riskerar att ha negativa konsekvenser för regeringens mycket diskuterade arbete mot "radikalisering".
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Sydsvenska dagbladet 13 mars 2014
http://www.sydsvenskan.se/kultur--nojen/johan-pries-efter-mordforsoket-pa-mollevangen-vi-behover-inte-fler-offer-for-at/
http://www.sydsvenskan.se/kultur--nojen/johan-pries-efter-mordforsoket-pa-mollevangen-vi-behover-inte-fler-offer-for-at/
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"Kåldolmar och kravaller! Såhär i slutet av november har vi dykt ner i några historier kring 30 november. Vi talar med Johan Pries om kravallerna i Lund på 1990-talet och diskuterar kopplingarna till Danmark och gatans betydelse. Vi... more
"Kåldolmar och kravaller! Såhär i slutet av november har vi dykt ner i några historier kring 30 november. Vi talar med Johan Pries om kravallerna i Lund på 1990-talet och diskuterar kopplingarna till Danmark och gatans betydelse. Vi pratar också med idéhistorikern Petter Hellström om firandet av Kåldolmens dag, och Karl XII:s betydelse för nya kulturella influenser i Sverige på 1700-talet. Mycket nöje!"
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The Industrial Workers of the World’s brief moment of strength in the late 1910s can perhaps best be understood as a laboratory of class struggle. New groups of workers found themselves center stage in American class politics by... more
The Industrial Workers of the World’s brief moment of strength in the late 1910s can perhaps best be understood as a laboratory of class struggle. New groups of workers found themselves center stage in American class politics by experimenting with methods that took advantage of their precarious position on the labor market. Most of the IWW’s organizational structures collapsed during the 1920s, but the syndicalist experiments lived on beyond what had been the Wobblies strongholds.
One of the many translocal circuits that wobbly experiences circulated along was the routes of mobility and migration that the IWW had drawn much of its strength from. How Swedish-born the IWW veteran PJ Welinder’s return to his native country, after being ousted as temporary IWW General Secretary in 1925, is an interesting illustration of how the Wobblies defeat precipitated translocal flows of political experience. Welinder join the sizeable Swedish syndicalist union SAC at the peak of its strength and instantly set to work in implementing the lesson he learnt in the US.
The SAC:s late 1920s strategy, seeking to appropriate the respectability of Swedish Social Democracy, had created tensions that Welinder soon became the primary conduit of. By drawing on the US experiences Welinder led a break-away group consisting of several thousand members attempting to try more flexible and contentious methods understood to emanate from the IWW. In this paper I examine the profound effects that the IWW experiments had across time and space by asking how “American Syndicalism” took root in and beyond the SAC from 1926 onwards.
One of the many translocal circuits that wobbly experiences circulated along was the routes of mobility and migration that the IWW had drawn much of its strength from. How Swedish-born the IWW veteran PJ Welinder’s return to his native country, after being ousted as temporary IWW General Secretary in 1925, is an interesting illustration of how the Wobblies defeat precipitated translocal flows of political experience. Welinder join the sizeable Swedish syndicalist union SAC at the peak of its strength and instantly set to work in implementing the lesson he learnt in the US.
The SAC:s late 1920s strategy, seeking to appropriate the respectability of Swedish Social Democracy, had created tensions that Welinder soon became the primary conduit of. By drawing on the US experiences Welinder led a break-away group consisting of several thousand members attempting to try more flexible and contentious methods understood to emanate from the IWW. In this paper I examine the profound effects that the IWW experiments had across time and space by asking how “American Syndicalism” took root in and beyond the SAC from 1926 onwards.
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The huge success of Swedish social democracy in the interwar years is often understood in terms of a tactical move towards the right. The stoking of anti-Soviet nationalism, an electoral alliance with farmer populists, and the abandonment... more
The huge success of Swedish social democracy in the interwar years is often understood in terms of a tactical move towards the right. The stoking of anti-Soviet nationalism, an electoral alliance with farmer populists, and the abandonment of an orthodox Marxist line on socialization of capital by instead rearticulating liberal social policy are all taken as signs of this rightward motion. Marxist counter-arguments tend to focus on the intense labour militancy and a rise in union membership to highlight the role of class politics in this surge. While there has been interesting historical work on culture and civil society about this period, this debate has almost exclusively centred on the relationship between unruly and respectable everyday cultures of class.
I want to consider the little discussed history of two spatially interesting forms of civil society institutions in the decades leading up to the 1930s social democratic breakthrough: The People’s Houses and The People’s Parks. None of these institutions are unique to Sweden, but they appear to have been much more widespread in Sweden than anywhere else. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the scope and function of these institutions and discuss them as one possible factor in the social democratic road to power. In particular it seem that these sites rearticulated everyday geographies of urban culture in politically radical terms. The Peoples Houses and Parks could in this regard be considered powerful tools at a local scale, politically and culturally supporting the social democratic hegemonic claims on the national state.
I want to consider the little discussed history of two spatially interesting forms of civil society institutions in the decades leading up to the 1930s social democratic breakthrough: The People’s Houses and The People’s Parks. None of these institutions are unique to Sweden, but they appear to have been much more widespread in Sweden than anywhere else. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the scope and function of these institutions and discuss them as one possible factor in the social democratic road to power. In particular it seem that these sites rearticulated everyday geographies of urban culture in politically radical terms. The Peoples Houses and Parks could in this regard be considered powerful tools at a local scale, politically and culturally supporting the social democratic hegemonic claims on the national state.
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In 1891 the labour movement in Malmö opened Sweden’s rst “People’s park”. It would for many decades constitute a model for how culture and civil society could be mobilized politically to reinforce social democratic claims to hegemony,... more
In 1891 the labour movement in Malmö opened Sweden’s rst “People’s park”. It would for many decades constitute a model for how culture and civil society could be mobilized politically to reinforce social democratic claims to hegemony, replicated in hundreds People’s park in towns and villages in the years that followed. What for decades was a powerful cultural and financial resource for the labor movement began to lose its sway with the emergence of new kinds of youth culture in the 1950s, and after a long period of decline the debt-ridden institution was bought by the municipality in 1991.
This paper discuses how the park’s long and symbolically evocative history has been brought to bear on renewal plans for the park after its terminal crisis as an social movement owned space in the late 1980s. It argues that the past at times has been activated in fairly straight-forward fashion by material artifacts mobilized to prop up plans corresponding to visions dictated by present needs and vision.The past has also operated in plans in more unpredictable ways. In particular the persistence of spatial practices and representations formed in park’s mid century period has, often to the great surprise of urban planner, emerged in the planning process to unsettle redevelopment visions with striking consequences.
This paper discuses how the park’s long and symbolically evocative history has been brought to bear on renewal plans for the park after its terminal crisis as an social movement owned space in the late 1980s. It argues that the past at times has been activated in fairly straight-forward fashion by material artifacts mobilized to prop up plans corresponding to visions dictated by present needs and vision.The past has also operated in plans in more unpredictable ways. In particular the persistence of spatial practices and representations formed in park’s mid century period has, often to the great surprise of urban planner, emerged in the planning process to unsettle redevelopment visions with striking consequences.
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Urban planning is often understood as a sphere of expert knowledge. The visions for a future city this mode of expertise produces play a key role in the production of urban space. These envisioned futures however often fail to materialize... more
Urban planning is often understood as a sphere of expert knowledge. The visions for a future city this mode of expertise produces play a key role in the production of urban space. These envisioned futures however often fail to materialize exactly as planned, suggesting that resistance to specific plans can be an important site of political intervention.
In this paper I argue that the visions of urban planning must be understood as co-emerging with representations of actual space. Contemporary planning representations often operate through post-political language that de-emphasize conflicts. Still, that urban planning tends to focus on rectifying what is understood as existing ‘problems’ suggest that contradictions between actual and envisioned space is at the core of urban planning.
If the visions of plans co-emerge with representations of urban space in ways that articulate contradictions, the futures imagined by urban planning expertise might be understood as permeated by conflicts before ever facing resistance. To the external resistance against plans as a politically important problem, one might then add the internal contradictions that planning expertise articulates as a site for political interventions. Opposition developing outside neoliberal plans that connects with those that map and act within these internal fault lines of neoliberal planning expertise—like critical geographers—might then produce powerful political formations.
In this paper I argue that the visions of urban planning must be understood as co-emerging with representations of actual space. Contemporary planning representations often operate through post-political language that de-emphasize conflicts. Still, that urban planning tends to focus on rectifying what is understood as existing ‘problems’ suggest that contradictions between actual and envisioned space is at the core of urban planning.
If the visions of plans co-emerge with representations of urban space in ways that articulate contradictions, the futures imagined by urban planning expertise might be understood as permeated by conflicts before ever facing resistance. To the external resistance against plans as a politically important problem, one might then add the internal contradictions that planning expertise articulates as a site for political interventions. Opposition developing outside neoliberal plans that connects with those that map and act within these internal fault lines of neoliberal planning expertise—like critical geographers—might then produce powerful political formations.
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How neoliberal urban governance produces divided cities is a well-established research problem. "Attractive "and "connected" spaces are built to compete for demographics saturated by human capital. Areas inhabited by existing groups of... more
How neoliberal urban governance produces divided cities is a well-established research problem. "Attractive "and "connected" spaces are built to compete for demographics saturated by human capital. Areas inhabited by existing groups of residents understood to be less likely to contribute to the accumulation of human capital are simultaneously transformed by disinvestment and revanchist urbanism to spaces of deprivation. This bleak picture of class divisions being rearticulated as highly differentiated forms of attention to demographics across urban landscapes is, however, neither without its internal contradictions nor without possibilities of subversion. "Attractive spaces", being a kind of selectively enclosed commons, have a potential to be appropriated by everyday use and politically be redeployed beyond competition for human capital.
The neoliberal revolution in mapping and articulating desires through urban space have thus opened up new struggles over the city that cannot be contained to the defense of the last remains of Social democratic urbanity. Instead can James Fergusson's provocation to the left, suggesting that it search for subversive "uses" of neoliberal, help us hone in on what new horizons the neoliberal system opens up. By drawing on examples from archival work in Malmö, Sweden, will this paper focus on this emerging struggle over the right to attractive urban space developing as an everyday conflict from below and mediated through urban planning. Such conflicts over access to urban commons points to a contradiction within neoliberal capitalism, but also a potential to rearticulate its technologies to reach potentials well beyond the present conjuncture.
The neoliberal revolution in mapping and articulating desires through urban space have thus opened up new struggles over the city that cannot be contained to the defense of the last remains of Social democratic urbanity. Instead can James Fergusson's provocation to the left, suggesting that it search for subversive "uses" of neoliberal, help us hone in on what new horizons the neoliberal system opens up. By drawing on examples from archival work in Malmö, Sweden, will this paper focus on this emerging struggle over the right to attractive urban space developing as an everyday conflict from below and mediated through urban planning. Such conflicts over access to urban commons points to a contradiction within neoliberal capitalism, but also a potential to rearticulate its technologies to reach potentials well beyond the present conjuncture.
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Social movements contesting property claims often strive to achieve legitimacy by negotiating with the state. There are also contrasting strategies of groups avoiding mediation by directly seizing control of spaces without making public... more
Social movements contesting property claims often strive to achieve legitimacy by negotiating with the state. There are also contrasting strategies of groups avoiding mediation by directly seizing control of spaces without making public claims as the basis for negotiations. Our paper seeks to address the representational tactics of such movements and thus complicate the image of direct action politics as non-representational.
We would like to discuss these issues by turning to the 187 days long squatting of a building on Ringgatan in Malmö, Sweden, in 1990. The squatters framed their action by embracing a highly confrontational style of politics, at the time unknown in the Swedish left’s consensus-orientated politics. This confrontational attitude did initially not lead to any actual acts of violence but still disrupted the negotiations with authorities. With no direct interaction between the police and activists were observations of the drama acted out on the house’s roof from afar the only way for the police to observe their counterpart and produce the operational “police knowledge” needed to intervene.
The police decoded the small and inexperienced group of squatters, striking the same poses with the same "militant props" on almost all photographs from the time, as if the squatters were a well-established militant movement and based their tactics to this interpretation. Thus, the equally inexperienced police refused to evict Ringgatan until a complicated, expensive and well-rehearsed operation could be organized after six months of preparation. The squatters way of aesthetically framing their action, not negotiations yet modes of public representation, were thus a key aspect of the struggle over the Ringgatan house and a powerful intervention in the police’s work. This cultural framing bought the squatters over six months of access to the building and was a crucial tactic to temporarily suspending the dominant property regime.
We would like to discuss these issues by turning to the 187 days long squatting of a building on Ringgatan in Malmö, Sweden, in 1990. The squatters framed their action by embracing a highly confrontational style of politics, at the time unknown in the Swedish left’s consensus-orientated politics. This confrontational attitude did initially not lead to any actual acts of violence but still disrupted the negotiations with authorities. With no direct interaction between the police and activists were observations of the drama acted out on the house’s roof from afar the only way for the police to observe their counterpart and produce the operational “police knowledge” needed to intervene.
The police decoded the small and inexperienced group of squatters, striking the same poses with the same "militant props" on almost all photographs from the time, as if the squatters were a well-established militant movement and based their tactics to this interpretation. Thus, the equally inexperienced police refused to evict Ringgatan until a complicated, expensive and well-rehearsed operation could be organized after six months of preparation. The squatters way of aesthetically framing their action, not negotiations yet modes of public representation, were thus a key aspect of the struggle over the Ringgatan house and a powerful intervention in the police’s work. This cultural framing bought the squatters over six months of access to the building and was a crucial tactic to temporarily suspending the dominant property regime.
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Displacement of low-income groups is often directly carried out by those who stand to benefit from gentrification. What effects such actions by real estate owners have is, however, mediated by the state's regulation of space. The proposed... more
Displacement of low-income groups is often directly carried out by those who stand to benefit from gentrification. What effects such actions by real estate owners have is, however, mediated by the state's regulation of space. The proposed paper tracks some ways that neoliberal urban planning can operate to provide "profitable" residents to landlords by taking claims of social responsibility, rather than openly revanchist policies, as a starting point.
With examples from Malmö, Sweden, is displacement discussed in regards to planning with distinctively social ambitions. Malmö's Social democratic heritage is then primarily not understood as a pre-history to the municipality's highly publicized claims of "social sustainability". Key planning innovations can instead be seen through other, less visible and less flattering, means of reworking social interventions.
Fragments of post-war social engineering directed at understanding and remaking "the poor" is in Malmö combined with neoliberal understandings of competition for human capital. This has allowed the development of a refined planning toolkit for changing the demographic composition of cities by pro-actively producing "attractive space". Social care has thus not been hollowed out, but instead redirecting at aiding the affluent as a means of attracting them to strategic sites.
These shifting models for producing social knowledge and social planning interventions allows for theorizing the state's role in the neoliberal displacement of low-income groups in new ways. It also identifies social knowledge and policy as a key area of potential contestation and subversion - be it by residents, grassroots groups or critical academics.
With examples from Malmö, Sweden, is displacement discussed in regards to planning with distinctively social ambitions. Malmö's Social democratic heritage is then primarily not understood as a pre-history to the municipality's highly publicized claims of "social sustainability". Key planning innovations can instead be seen through other, less visible and less flattering, means of reworking social interventions.
Fragments of post-war social engineering directed at understanding and remaking "the poor" is in Malmö combined with neoliberal understandings of competition for human capital. This has allowed the development of a refined planning toolkit for changing the demographic composition of cities by pro-actively producing "attractive space". Social care has thus not been hollowed out, but instead redirecting at aiding the affluent as a means of attracting them to strategic sites.
These shifting models for producing social knowledge and social planning interventions allows for theorizing the state's role in the neoliberal displacement of low-income groups in new ways. It also identifies social knowledge and policy as a key area of potential contestation and subversion - be it by residents, grassroots groups or critical academics.
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Increasing levels of urban conflict in the wake of the neoliberal financialization of space have in the last few years been articulated by political demands for “rights to the city” and academic inquiries into “spatial justice”. While... more
Increasing levels of urban conflict in the wake of the neoliberal financialization of space have in the last few years been articulated by political demands for “rights to the city” and academic inquiries into “spatial justice”. While this focus on open contestations of political rationalities are undoubtedly important factors in mapping the present socio-cultural production of space, less attention has been given to the more mundane contradictions of the day to day operations reproducing the neoliberal city.
The present paper proposes to study such everyday forms of conflict through its mediation by, and effect on, urban planning. Through archival inquiry into what planners “renders visible” new light can be brought on how everyday claims and practices affect the knowledge and interventions crafted by urban planning. Examples of how the grand schemes of redevelopment are shaped and disrupted by contentions in everyday life are collected from research on the last 35 years of Post-Fordist redevelopment of Malmö (Sweden).
These preliminary results pointing to the vulnerability of urban planning discourse are complemented by a proposed narrative approach to planning theory. While the city’s everyday contradictions are constructed as issues that draws the planner’s gaze to an area, planning as an expert knowledge must be able to narratively connect these problems to a potential of future “development”. Forms of contradictions that cannot be understood as containing a potential of development are thus excluded from the soft power of planning discourse, and dealt with by other, often more harsh, types of interventions.
The present paper proposes to study such everyday forms of conflict through its mediation by, and effect on, urban planning. Through archival inquiry into what planners “renders visible” new light can be brought on how everyday claims and practices affect the knowledge and interventions crafted by urban planning. Examples of how the grand schemes of redevelopment are shaped and disrupted by contentions in everyday life are collected from research on the last 35 years of Post-Fordist redevelopment of Malmö (Sweden).
These preliminary results pointing to the vulnerability of urban planning discourse are complemented by a proposed narrative approach to planning theory. While the city’s everyday contradictions are constructed as issues that draws the planner’s gaze to an area, planning as an expert knowledge must be able to narratively connect these problems to a potential of future “development”. Forms of contradictions that cannot be understood as containing a potential of development are thus excluded from the soft power of planning discourse, and dealt with by other, often more harsh, types of interventions.