Organizing and Managing Transition to Sustainable Urban Districts and Housing Structures. A Comparative Study of Swedish and Danish Cases of Current Urban Planning Practices

In Scandinavia baby boomers coming of age in 1960s, in combination with a massive migration from rural to urban areas, caused a massive demand for new housing. Public authority responded by soliciting to social housing associations to construct a huge number of dwellings within a short time span. In Sweden for example, this large scale social housing estate construction program is known as the Million-Program aimed at constructing one million dwellings (in a population of 7.5 million people) during the ten year period 1965-1975. Today the housing estates are 40-50 years old and highly in need of renovation. The international and interdisciplinary Swedish-Danish action research project ‘Sound Settlements’ addressed the complex challenge of performing a sustainable regeneration of the 1960-70 housing estates within a holistic framework that sees them as integrated combinations of dwellings, places of work, services, recreation and infrastructure. The paper addresses the organizational and collaborative issues emanating from the planning and implementation of regeneration programs in three housing estates/neighborhoods in the two countries. Empirical data were collected in the three case studies through analysis of documents, field observation, interviews and focus group seminars. Results showed that despite many similarities between the Swedish and Danish welfare state models, the organization of the social housing sector differs significantly between the two countries. This brings about very different conditions for finance and consequently for organization of sustainable regeneration of 1960-70s’ suburban housing estates. On the Swedish side housing estates are either privately owned or organized as part of a municipal organization, whereas on the Danish side social housing estates are owned by independent, democratically organized and governed non-profit housing associations. Efficacy of the two different organizational approaches varies correspondingly; there is obviously a trade-off between organizational modes favoring a democratic approach and efficiency when it comes to decision-making, particularly when it comes to strategic decisions with consequences reaching decades into the future. Thus, one typical dilemma is the schism between the interests of present residents and the interests of future generations of residents. Moreover, organizational structure also influences the financial capability of the individual estates which in turn affects decision-making when it comes to choosing between long-term and more sustainable (but in the short term more costly) renovation models rather cheaper but less sustainable alternatives.