A Case Study beyond Multiple Dichotomies. Paper presented at . In Oulu August 2007

Abstract

The mining town Kiruna is located in the very north of Sweden. There is an on-going plan-ning to move or rebuild one third part of the town, caused by the extended mining activity. The development of the town concludes multiple of dichotomies. The concept is here seen in a classical view as a division into two usually contradictory parts or opinions. A growth of the mine will give the economy to make the out-taking more effective. Effec-tiveness will decline the demand of employers in the mine. The global iron prise is influenc-ing the outtake of the iron ore, from which follows a local development of the town. Urban development will affect the rural surroundings and its opportunities to be developed. A mine is in fact dependent on the place to be able to take out ore. At the same time the electronic technique makes it possible to manoeuvre the mine work on distance. The current planning is very intense, caused by an extremely short timetable and is in that sense very practical. There is a risk for lack of time for theoretical considerations of the plan-ning management. The local authority has worked out a long term vision 100 years ahead in addition the mining company are planning for outtake from the mine during the coming 100 years. At the same time there are short term issues as the railway track, that is threatened within some years and has to be moved before 2013. The structure of the future town is in-credibly dependent of the location of the railway and connected travelling centre. The professional planners managing the planning processes have ambitions to involve the inhabitants as laymen. The ambitions to involve the inhabitants draw the processes in a gov-ernance approach. However the real processes are handled in a more traditional governmental way. The governmental approach even includes ambitions to reach consensus between the ac-tors and stakeholders engaged in the processes. Even though there seems to be more conflicts than consensus in trying to reach decisions. The try-outs of forms of participatory democratic methods are then to be secured by an ordinary representative democracy. The research is worked out as a case study by a combination of qualitative and quantita-tive methods. The paper deals with the dilemmas caused by all the dichotomies comprised in the case study and how these dilemmas are managed in some parallel planning processes be-yond the visible dichotomies

Conference

Nordic Symposium: Local Authority planning in Change – Beyond Dichotomies

SLU Authors

• Nilsson l, Kristina

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics and Business
Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
Landscape Architecture


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/16190