Visioning and social sustainability versus property: The case of Norra Sorgenfri, Malmö

ABSTRACT

The article addresses the simple but pertinent question of why ambitious urban planning visions slowly lose a significant share of their aims during the implementation phase and why there often occurs a significant time span between vision and implementation. Using the development of the deindustrialised Norra Sorgenfri neighbourhood in central Malmö, Sweden, as an example, the author enquires into why developing the area became so complicated, and why the original vision, with its focus on social sustainability, largely disappeared despite private developers having invested in land acquisition in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Based on document analysis of the vision for Norra Sorgenfri from 2006 and the subsequent planning programme from 2008, as well as interviews with planners and property developers, this article seeks to highlight the mechanisms due to which the implementation of the Norra Sorgenfri plans differs from original visions and strategies, as well as examine why the process was so slow. The authors conclude that the planning office’s ‘visioning’ becomes powerless in the face of ‘property-led regeneration’ where private developers have most of the decision-making power, and that the ‘social sustainability’ ideal cannot be achieved through physical regeneration alone.

KEYWORDS:

• Malmö
• social sustainability
• urban planning

Introduction

This article addresses the simple but pertinent questions of why ambitious urban planning visions slowly lose a significant share of their aims during the implementation phase and why there often occurs a significant time span between vision and implementation. Using the development of the deindustrialised Norra Sorgenfri neighbourhood in central Malmö, Sweden, as an example, I enquire into why developing the area became so complicated, and why the original vision with its focus on social sustainability largely disappeared, despite private developers having invested in land acquisition in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Based on document analysis of Vision Norra Sorgenfri – inför omvandling och planarbete, presenting the vision for Norra Sorgenfri published in 2006 (Malmö stad 2006) and the subsequent planning programme from 2008, Norra Sorgenfri planprogram (Malmö stad 2008), as well as interviews with planners and property developers, I seek to highlight the mechanisms due to which the implementation of the Norra Sorgenfri plans differs from original visions and strategies, as well as to examine why the process was so slow.

It should be noted that the discrepancy between planning and implementation in Norra Sorgenfri is by no means exceptional. In a Scandinavian context, similar progressions – each with their own specific circumstances different from those in Norra Sorgenfri – have been reported for Gothenburg (Brorström & Styhre 2021), the Hyllie development in Malmö (Isakson & Heikkinen 2018; Parks & Wallsten 2020), and the Western Harbour area in Malmö (& Hult 2021), amongst other places. The Hyllie development project was originally conceived as a flagship project for sustainable urban development with a particular focus on climate neutrality and sustainable energy consumption, but this ultimately failed: the actors with the strongest influence over the project – the private developers and the city’s real estate department – were predominantly interested in shopping, high mobility, economic growth, and attractiveness at the expense of the ecological sustainability ambitions (Isakson & Heikkinen 2018). Holgersen & Hult (2021) demonstrate how the ecological sustainability merits of Malmö’s internationally renowned sustainable flagship project the Western Harbour may similarly become undone if affluence and consumption levels in this wealthy neighbourhood are taken in account.

Whilst Hyllie and Western Harbour were city-owned blank canvasses to be developed, developing a vision for Norra Sorgenfri was a daunting task. It was a neighbourhood with old, derelict industrial buildings, much contaminated land from previous industrial activity, 38 properties owned by 30 private owners that required negotiation, and existing economic activities with no plans to move anywhere, as well as a place in which homeless people and sex workers gathered at night. The city of Malmö owned only about one-fifth of the land in Norra Sorgenfri. However, due to its central location, the district had a lot of residential potential. One private who had visited the area in the early 2000s – before the city had published a vision statement –had subsequently told his colleague: ‘this is the next neighbourhood in Malmö that will be developed’. Indeed, a wave of acquisitions by real estate developers was witnessed around that same time, and between 1996 and 2004, 23 properties changed hands; prior to and following that period, the acquisition frequency was low (Lantmäteriet 2021). This was a clear sign that the property development industry had set its sights on the development of the central industrial area, well before the city’s authorities had finished formulating their vision for the area.

Visioning

While the owner-developers were geared up to make profits from residential development at some point in the future, planners working with the neighbourhood were keen to prepare a distinctive planning vision for the central part of the city with all its industrial heritage. Its unique character, including for example its architecture and the presence of art studios, were to be incorporated in the plans. Taking ‘what is there’ as a starting point for development was to result in more than ‘just another development’ like those emerging on large empty land areas on the edge of the city. Norra Sorgenfri was not to be a tabula rasa like Western Harbour; it was to be full of activity and architecture worth preserving.

Visions have always been part of urban planning and renewal, but ‘visioning’ as a recognised urban planning tool debuted in the USA in the late 1980s (Klein et al. 1993; Shipley & Newkirk 1998; 1999). Its origins were in vision research and practice in business management and organisation studies, where it was already well established (Shipley Michela 2006). In urban planning, the need for visioning initially stemmed from disenchantment with modernist planning’s top-down approach and its lack of citizen involvement (Kornberger 2012). ‘Visioning’ in collaboration with citizens and other stakeholders was seen as the solution to the problem. Today, visioning and stakeholder consultation are standard tools in urban planning and they have remained more or the less the same since the early days when they were introduced as a reaction to urban planning’s deficiencies. The visioning work in Norra Sorgenfri has not been any different. A vision, then, is a ‘demonstration technology’ (Giraudeau 2018) to show any interested or involved party what the development goals are and how they could be reached in order to generate a common understanding or narrative regarding the focus or aim of the urban renewal project.

The 2006 vision document for Norra Sorgenfri (Malmö stad 2006) and the subsequent 2008 planning programme (Malmö stad 2008) aimed for the district to become a significant extension of the inner city, with small-scale developments rather than enclaves of large separate blocks of flats disconnected from their adjacent inner-city neighbourhoods – a rejection of Million Homes Programme¹ style modernist planning, indeed. Many developers, rather than just a few, should be invited in order to guarantee the scale the planners had in mind. At the time as the vision for Norra Sorgenfri was put into writing, the area was divided in large industrial land plots which, according to the vision, should be split into smaller plots to create architectural variety. The resulting neighbourhood should be affordable for many people; it should not become a neighbourhood for the privileged. The Norra Sorgenfri project should be an engine to stimulate ‘social sustainability’ in the city by creating diverse forms of public life. However, at the same time, the published vision states clearly that the area lends itself well to offering ‘loft living’ in former industrial buildings and developing ‘townhouses’, an expensive residential form. Furthermore, according to the published vision, the road network should not strive towards maximum traffic efficiency but contribute to small-scale sustainable developments that respect existing activities in the area, such as businesses and artist studios. It should become a ‘mixed’ area with different functions and variety in housing provision; the vision mentions a new railway station on the adjacent railway line. While the area should house activities that attract visitors, these activities should not be ‘spectacular’: ‘we would rather have a Turkish bath house than an opera house’ (Malmö stad 2006, 10). Inspired by the Old Spitalfields Market in London, the large, abandoned city-owned bus depot could be turned into a bazar. Many small business premises should be provided at street level along the main roads. Spontaneous developments that had received a positive response from the public, such as skateboard ramps built in the area by skateboard enthusiasts, should be preserved. There should be small semi-private park areas behind the residential buildings, and they should connect with each other and with a newly-built botanical garden, which Malmö lacks. The vision recognises that the property structure will complicate development and thus suggests cooperation between the city and private owners, as well as amongst private owners, in addition to a land acquisition strategy by the city.

Planning visions fulfil a variety of roles. The most obvious of these is the creation of a focus on the desired direction in which a neighbourhood should develop. The reverse side of this is that planning visions suppress other developments. In the case of Norra Sorgenfri, the resulting neighbourhood should become a densely built-up area and not something else. In an interview with a local newspaper, landscape architect Erik Skärbäck suggested that the entire area could be turned into a park (Bergström 2010). There are few green areas in the eastern part of Malmö, and the amount of public space (parks, squares, streets) in Malmö on the whole shrunk from 40% in 1970 to a mere 27% in 2000 (Sydsvenskan 2010). A planning vision with a virtually exclusive focus on creating a dense built environment forecloses such possibilities or discussions on the need for green infrastructure in the area. Furthermore, a planning vision can play a crucial role in breaking a development stalemate and convincing landlords to start developing their land. The paradoxical inactivity of landowners in the face of development potential and the proactive role of state actors to mitigate this was first highlighted by Harding (1991) in a UK context, and later Christophers (2022) discerned it in a contemporary Swedish context.

Property-led regeneration

The planning vision’s function of prompting development activity becomes even more important in the case of property-led redevelopment, which depends entirely on developer action. Property-led regeneration such as that in Norra Sorgenfri is based on the simple, but unproven idea that physical regeneration (i.e. the construction of properties) will automatically lead to economic regeneration and community prosperity in a city. The very construction creates employment, buildings attract certain people who pay taxes and businesses that create more jobs. Physical improvement makes neighbourhoods more attractive for more investments, and this will eventually lead to an economic boost for the entire city, the benefits of which will trickle down to everyone (Turok 1992).

Private actors take a more proactive role in property-led regeneration schemes, and this poses serious challenges in attempts to balance public and private interests (Tasan-Kok 2010). There is a heavy dependence on private developers, meaning that cities are often proactive in seeking contact with developers and convincing them that they will benefit from investment. City-owned land may be offered at favourable prices to attract developers in the first place, as was the case with the city-owned plot of land ‘Spårvägen’ in Norra Sorgenfri very early in the renewal phase, when investors were only moderately interested in becoming one of the first private developers in the area. In the case of privately-owned land, the city may have to be very active in convincing the owner to develop, or perhaps sell to an interested developer. It was not until the city of Malmö demonstrated through its public housing company MKB that constructing residential property in Norra Sorgenfri did not necessarily carry high risks, that private developers followed suit.

Property-led regeneration produces specific ‘situated actions’ (Suchman 2007) or the practical work that occurs when the plan is set in motion. In the case of a property-led regeneration project such as Norra Sorgenfri, actions are situated in the sense that private developers mobilise business models and calculative practices (e.g. estimating future revenues that could justify the investment), and partner with companies, all of which have particular outcomes that support realisation of the plan. Precisely herein lies the explanation for the Norra Sorgenfri vision’s weakness. Urban renewal processes in Norra Sorgenfri are hampered by the simultaneous deployment of two dominant but paradoxical planning approaches: the process of ‘visioning’ by the planning office, and the mobilisation of ‘property-led development’ to generate investments and make physical urban renewal possible in the first place. Visioning by planners and property development by private companies are two activities that follow different logics that are certainly not always congruent. Nonetheless, they (the planners and companies) are forced to cooperate, as cities are dependent on the private sector for property investment – not least in times of austerity – while private developers are strongly reliant on state actors with their organisational capacity to coordinate investment efforts by gathering different private investors around the table. Whilst the latter may give state actors in urban renewal quite a bit of leverage to make private developers comply with the vision in question, ultimately the developer makes the decision to invest.

Developers follow their own logic, and this is very much steered by their business model and subsequent calculations. Developers do not develop neighbourhoods but dwellings with specific layouts to cater for specific target groups, such as ‘young families with children’. Dwellings are a product that must be designed in a very specific way to meet market demand as accurately as possible. Some developers show an interest in the overall layout of the neighbourhood, but they generally need to follow their business model, which is confined to the scale of the building, and they pay little attention to what is happening at other scales. Developers generally have little interest in the preservation of industrial buildings, or they may even be opposed to preservation if that would obstruct the most profitable investment on a particular location. At best, the industrial past of Norra Sorgenfri is a selling point for flats located in a fashionable, post-industrial, central area of town. One real estate agency dubbed a residential development that went on the market in 2023 ‘Industrial Corner’, a ‘masterpiece oozing industrialism’s earlier glory days’ by using materials such as brick stones and concrete ceilings, thereby giving it a ‘large dose of Brooklyn, New York’ (Vaningen n.d.).

Furthermore, a focus on property as a development tool detracts attention from non-property developments such as public space, transport infrastructure, and green and blue infrastructure. As an example, the botanical garden suggested in the initial visions for Norra Sorgenfri was never materialised, and nor was a new railway station on the adjacent railway line.

Dependence on private developers for regeneration schemes exposes those schemes strongly to the economic rhythms of the real estate industries. Just as the planning programme was ready in 2008, the global financial crisis at the time triggered a virtual standstill of construction activities in Malmö, thus delaying the planning process. Meanwhile, according to some, the development of Norra Sorgenfri has never been among the highest priorities for the city of Malmö; the city has always regarded the ecologically ambitious projects in Hyllie and Western Harbour as its flagship developments. Not only were those places ‘easier’ to develop since they were city-owned blank spaces, but they could also easily be mobilised to support the overall international branding of Malmö as an ecologically sustainable city. The renewal of Norra Sorgenfri was in the first place an attempt for planners to remove a large area considered a blight on the middle of the city and for developers to cash in on its central location through residential development. Moreover, in 2010 the city temporarily turned its attention to developing several relatively deprived inner-city areas, consolidating them, and rebranding them as ‘Amiralstaden’. Time and energy from the planning office were thus rerouted from Norra Sorgenfri to Amiralstaden. In addition, the city’s real estate department does not always follow the planning office’s plans and recommendations in its dealings with developers; this was also the case in the Hyllie development. For example, the original plan sought to preserve 12,000 m² of the former bus garage as a public space – this was a key factor in encouraging social sustainability; the space was later reduced to 3000 m².

Finally, it is difficult, if not impossible, to pursue social sustainability through the physical regeneration of a neighbourhood. Lees (2003, 75) demonstrates that urban form has a key role in addressing a range of urban problems, from social to ethnic and environmental:

the foundation for urban renaissance and sustainability is densification of the urban form. Densification of the urban form has become a magic cure-all for a variety of environmental and social ills. The compact urban form will reduce traffic congestion and pollution, reduce pressure on open space, habitat and agricultural land in the greenbelt, and reduce global warming.

According to Lees (2003), traditional urban form is presented in classic architectural determinism as an approach to foster an urban lifestyle that emphasises diversity, community, and sustainability. The architectural determinism of the plans for Norra Sorgenfri plans works against the desire to turn the district into a socially sustainable neighbourhood (Tran & Rydin 2019): social sustainability cannot be built.

Conclusions

In this article I have explored why the urban renewal process in Norra Sorgenfri area of Malmö was so protracted and why many of the praiseworthy ambitions of the initial plans gradually vanished. A growing divergence between the ‘plan’ and the ‘situated action’ can be witnessed in the aftermath of the plan’s publication. While property developers had bought up land well before the plan was made publicly available, most private developers were hesitant to pioneer residential development projects. A sustained effort by the city to coordinate between developers and owners, the early construction of a residential block by the municipal housing company, the waning of the uncertainties amongst developers in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and a renewed focus of the planning office on the development of Norra Sorgenfri finally resulted in the first investments by private developers in the second half of the 2010s. I have discerned two large contradictions that may explain the disappearance of much of the initial ambition. First, the planning office’s ‘visioning’ becomes toothless in the face of ‘property-led development’, where property owners earn a disproportionate share of decision-making power in the renewal process. Second, social sustainability aspirations are difficult, if not impossible, to realise through physical regeneration – while the urban blight removal in Norra Sorgenfri has done much to upgrade the eastern parts of Malmö, establishing a socially sustainable neighbourhood requires a more complex toolbox than mere physical upgrading. Property-led regeneration, visioning, and social sustainability are not congruous.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 To deal with the shortage, the Swedish government initiated the Million Homes Programme to build 1 million new dwellings between 1965 and 1974 (Hall & Vidén 2005).