8 minute read
Growing city demands new solutions
Uppsala is a city that has experienced significant growth over recent years and its expansion is set to continue. Together with Uppsala University, the municipality is now jointly investing in research to identify good, sustainable solutions for the future.
text ANNICA HULTH photo MIKAEL WALLERSTEDT
OSustainable cities “The doctoral student will be studying the choices available to a growing city in terms of energy systems. The aim is to obtain a sustainable energy system in Uppsala, environmentally, economically and socially,” explains Rafael Waters. Waters is a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and supervisor of the doctoral student in question, Carl Flygare, who began work in May 2020. The main electricity supply problem facing Uppsala is that the power lines into the city are under-dimensioned, leading to power shortages when the weather gets colder in the winter.
ONE OF UPPSALA’S newest districts is ation so the municipality is well aware of the
Rosendal, where the first housing estate need to explore how the city can continue to was completed in 2015. Since then, sev- expand without being limited by the electrieral thousand homes have been built and city grid. There is a great deal to look at in more are planned. During a stroll through terms of smart grids, renewable electricity the district, we encounter young parents production and when and how to charge with prams, lunch guests leaving the electric vehicles. How can we utilise the local sushi restaurant and builders on electricity grid more efficiently so that we their way to work. don’t need to expand it as often or as much?”
If all goes according to plan, the district “This is already a very challenging situwill be completed in 2028, by which time DOCTORAL STUDENT CARL Flygare will be it will have space for 10,000 residents, al- conducting research full-time, with one though the timetable may change depend- foot in the University and one in the muing on the state of the housing market. nicipality. The Foundation for Collabora-
This is a familiar picture in Uppsala as tion between the Universities in Uppsala, the municipality plans for continued robust Business, and the Public Sector (STUNS) expansion until 2050. The comprehensive will assist with contacts with various replan, known as the Uppsala Package, in- search environments, municipalities and cludes four new railway tracks to Stock- the business community, thereby linking holm and an expansion of the city to the a variety of stakeholders. southeast to create 33,000 new homes. “In terms of sustainable social and urban development, it is the municipality that is
ONE OF THE CHALLENGES is to meet the the need owner with an interest in contactdemand for electricity in a sustainable ing cutting-edge research, methodologies manner. In collaboration with Uppsala and working methods. For the University’s
University, the municipality has employed part, we will be guaranteed that the research a doctoral student to research the possi- is socially relevant; so, there is a mutual bilities. interest,” says Waters, who stresses the importance of finding the right direction for the project so that high-quality research overlaps with social relevance: “When both sides are committed and learn from one another, it creates an opportunity to take things up a gear to include further collaborations. The hope is that there will also be an interest in identifying such overlaps in other fields of research.”
“One challenge for future energy systems will be that people will become a greater part of the solution, meaning that we need to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries”, says Rafael Waters, professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering. WATERS IS ADAMANT that simply developing smart technological solutions will be insufficient for tomorrow’s sustainable cities. “As we move away from fossil fuels, a large part of the solution will be electrification and smart energy systems. Instead
Karin Backvall and Andreas Alm Fjellborg conduct research in the field of cultural geography and divide their time between the University and the municipality.
of controlling the production of electricity based on how we consume, we will attempt to adapt consumption to the available electricity. One challenge for future energy systems will therefore be that people will become a greater part of the solution, meaning that we need to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries.”
The project is part of a strategic partnership agreement reached between the municipality and the University in June 2019 to collaborate on sustainable social development. There are also three researchers – one full-time and two half-time – at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research who are co-financed by the University and municipality.
IN THE OPINION of Åsa Dahlin, head of comprehensive planning at Uppsala Muni-
PHOTO: UPPSALA UNIVERSITET, MEDIIVIR (HACKSELL)
cipality’s Urban Planning Department, this new collaboration contributes to closing the gap between research and municipal practice.
“The post-doctoral researchers have dayto-day relationships with the municipality’s strategic urban planners – something that paves the way for a shared knowledge journey. The dialogue with researchers has already contributed to deepening our understanding of analyses of socially sustainable housing stock, processes of segregation and the stigmatisation of urban districts,” says Dahlin.
One of the researchers is Karin Backvall. She researches housing segregation and the image of “deprived housing estates”; for example, as disseminated in the media. When a neighbourhood is described as a “problem area”, the problems may be exacerbated.
“I am currently processing material from the media covering reporting from Örebro, Västerås and Uppsala, all municipalities with neighbourhoods identified by the police as deprived, and I am interested in how they are portrayed in the media and what differences there might be. I am also preparing a questionnaire that will be sent to residents in and outside these neighbourhoods to see whether and how the perception of the places is influenced by differences in media reporting,” she explains.
JUST LIKE THE other researchers, Backvall spends half of her time with the municipality, more specifically at the Strategic Planning Division. She conducts her research as normal but has regular contact with the municipality.
“I have become more aware of how research can be put to use; for example, I will not only analyse how the image of a neighbourhood is created and changes and how this varies from place to place, but also what one can tangibly do about it.”
Fellow researcher Anders Alm Fjellborg is also a cultural geographer and his working day at the municipality is largely spent in meetings, discussing issues and identifying aspects that are of interest to him as a researcher.
Together with Martin Söderhäll, another postdoctoral fellow, he studies the new production of housing in relation to the municipality’s goals for socially mixed housing and the eventual outcomes.
“We have honed the issues to make them more directly relevant to the municipality. We have received useful input and, the more directly relevant it is, the more enjoyable it is. Our discussions have allowed us to make progress but we still have complete freedom to choose our own issues.”
THE RESEARCHERS USE the Geo Sweden database, which contains population registry data from Statistics Sweden, to follow the population over the years, to see how people move and what incomes they have. This allows them to study housing stock, the distribution of various groups and how this changes over time.
”Thanks to our collaboration, municipal officials are able to meet researchers who see openings for research in day-to-day activities,” says Nils Hertting
“There is a great deal of building going on in Uppsala and there is a very ambitious plan for the coming 10–15 years. It is important to know how things have worked in earlier new production. There is also a major difference between building new residential districts and densifying existing neighbourhoods. In Rosendal it was possible to take a holistic approach as everything was built from scratch; it’s different in a residential area that is to be densified. It will be very interesting to see how the social mix is affected by planning in various neighbourhoods; for example, where tenant-owner properties are built in areas with many rental apartments.”
NILS HERTTING, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research, also sees great opportunities in the new research appointments. He is convinced that mutually beneficial research projects can be found in areas such as the development of deprived housing estates.
“Karin Backvall’s study deals with how we talk about neighbourhoods that are considered to have problems – what we call stigmatisation. This is something that municipal planners are well aware of and try to deal with on a daily basis. How should we formulate the challenges without making the problems worse? This is the subject of some fairly sophisticated social science theories while being a difficult issue in practice for the municipality.”
Research can also help when it comes to evaluating the long-term impact of home building and political decisions, effects that might not be felt until 30 years later and can last for half a century. Here, researchers can go back to study history; for example, how residential areas were built in the past.
“This makes a fine contribution to practitioners and planners, given that this kind of thing is difficult to assess. The processes involved are often complex and rather cumbersome and slow going. Thanks to our collaboration, municipal officials can meet researchers and identify research approaches together,” says Hertting.
Strategic partnership
• Uppsala University and Uppsala Municipality have a strategic partnership agreement covering the period 2019–2021.
• Sustainable community building is one specific focus area during the agreement period. This may include research collaborations, training, staff mobility and skills provision.
• It is calculated that the population of Uppsala Municipality will grow by as many as 100,000 people over the coming decades. The municipality has stated goals of being fossil-free by 2030 and climate positive by 2050 and has also set targets for social and economic sustainability. There are therefore major challenges to be met in areas such as climate adaptation, integration, skills provision, transport, construction, energy, digitalisation and foodstuffs.
