In Sweden, the main responsibility for urban planning lies with the Municipalities. The county administrative boards are responsible for clarifying the governmental interests for the Municipalities. The main purpose of this essay was to study documents with descriptions of national heritage areas in order to examine whether certain problems within these documents are still present in the most recent ones. This was done by comparing old documents with new ones. The problem with these kinds of documents has been the lack of clarification of cultural values in national heritage areas.

Local cultural environment planning in Sweden often comes to rely on municipal heritage plans. These plans are meant to facilitate management of local cultural values, work as a tool for local planning and increase awareness of cultural environments for the public. In the last decades public participation in planning has become more and more of the ideal strategy, challenging the idea of cultural environment planning as an expert-led field. The idea of the field as one that implicates public participation as a strategy has been fortified in Sweden through national goals, government bills and conventions. Nevertheless the implementation of public participation in municipal heritage plans remains quite uncharted. The aim of this study is to explore public participation in regards to how municipal heritage plans are developed and the perception of public participation in cultural environment planning amongst professionals, comparing bigger and smaller Municipalities.

The work with Agenda 21 resulted in a larger focus on local participation and deliberation. The Swedish implementation of Agenda 21 is a result of these local governments´ political agendas and policies.The purpose with this paper is to examine the relationship between the citizen and the local government. It focuses on three theories of citizenship and how the view of "the environmental aware citizen?; in the local government?s Municipalities policies differ and from which theory of citizenship do they come from.The analysis is of a valuing and comparing nature. The Municipalities´ web pages have been the main source to generate an understanding of their view on the normative environmental work.

This study aimed to explore the perceived role and mandate of civil servants employed in Municipalities in Kronoberg county. The study aimed to answer the question whether civil servants engaged in municipal economics have different perspectives on their mandate and role based on how said civil servants implement and manage policy tools available in Swedish Municipalities. The study aimed to through policy tools theory explain how civil servants through four categories view the policy tools employed in the municipality. The study is based on the reasoning that policy tools influences exercise of authority that in turn influences view on policy tools. In order to study civil servants perspective on perceived mandate and role interviews were conducted with a sample of civil servants from each of the eight Municipalities in Kronoberg county.

In this undergraduate thesis you will venture on a journey through the land of democratic values and urban planning. My research question is stated as: whether or not urban planning can show effects on democratic values and whether or not the Municipalities in Sweden takes these possible effects into account when planning their city centres. You will in my theory part of this thesis be able to read about different views on urban planning and on democracy. Famous authors like Robert D. Putnam and Richard Florida will be examined as well as other theorists on democracy and urban planning.

Learning organizations and organizational development are interesting subjects that does not examine municipal organizations and private organizations an equal amount.  Furthermore, there exists little research on the effects of competence development for individuals in a leadership role within organizations. Because of this, we wanted to examine the impact of competence development in business modeling and how it affected local government activities. Competence development is used by organizations to develop their business and achieve a greater competitive advantage, but does competence development for individuals in a leadership role lead to organizational development? This paper examines competence development in the form of a business modeling course via the Bitstreamproject and the effects that occur within three Municipalities as a result of the competence development. By interviewing three participants and four coworkers within different Municipalities and studied the data from the Bitstream project, we can not conclude that competence development within business modeling leads to organizational development, only that it exists a tendency for it.

The national spatial planning guidelines and the subsequent legal regulation in the Natural Resources Act and the Environmental Code has been a part of the Swedish planning system for almost 40 years. In the recent years, critics have claimed that the regulations are outdated and does not work the way it was intended. This paper examines closer why it is perceived that the regulations does not work, with a focus on how the national interests are managed in the municipal planning. Why is the national interests not applied in the municipal planning as intended? Is the error in the system or in the implementation of it? The aim of this essay is to study the gap between theory and practice by studying how the land management provisions in the Environmental Code is applied in five selected Municipalities.

The aim of this thesis is to examine whether law reforms in the detailed planning process can be an aspect that gets in conflict with the citizens rights to participate in the Swedish planning through dialogue, and how five chosen Municipalities are working with citizen participation. To be able to answer the aim of the thesis a literature study and five semi-structured interviews was performed in purpose to get wide-ranging information from municipal officials working with detailed planning handling. Law changes that aims to make the detailed planning process more efficient has been implemented partly to satisfy the needs of dwellings since the detailed planning process among master builders seems to be slow and inefficient, which to the them means higher costs. The requirement on having a detailed planning program was taken away when the new planning law was adopted year 2011. The planning program was including a moment of citizen dialogue. The case studied Municipalities have not been affected in this law change arguing that it?s still possible to bring a program if needed.

 The 1st of July 2006 Sweden made a change of authorities in the system concerning the reception of separated asylum seeking children. Prior to the change, the Swedish Board of Migration was held completely responsible for the reception of these children, who arrives in Sweden without their parents or any other relatives to care for them. Since the alteration of the law (1994:137) the responsibility for the housing of these children now lies within the Swedish Municipalities, while the Board of Migration still handles their legal commissions. The change was intended to fundamentally improve the conditions under which these children were taken care of. However the implementation took a severe wrong turn when the Municipalities weren't prepared for their new responsibilities and the immediate result was alarming. This qualitative study is based upon interviews with the people responsible for the reception of the separated asylum seeking children in the Municipalities of Kronobergs County, as well as one of the two people in charge of the new system at the Swedish Board of Migration.

Making the work in the public sector more efficient is something that has been seen as necessary during the later years. One way to do this on municipal level has been to apply solutions former used mostly by private companies. The organisational parts have also been adjusted to existing conditions in this work of change. For example more and more Municipalities have come to use the purchaser-supplier model since the beginning of the 1990's. Norrköping, Linköping and Motala have been chosen in this essay for a closer study of the effects of the changes of the 90's, from an efficiency point of view.

The national spatial planning guidelines and the subsequent legal regulation in the Natural Resources Act and the Environmental Code has been a part of the Swedish planning system for almost 40 years. In the recent years, critics have claimed that the regulations are outdated and does not work the way it was intended. This paper examines closer why it is perceived that the regulations does not work, with a focus on how the national interests are managed in the municipal planning. Why is the national interests not applied in the municipal planning as intended? Is the error in the system or in the implementation of it? The aim of this essay is to study the gap between theory and practice by studying how the land management provisions in the Environmental Code is applied in five selected Municipalities. The aim is also to find interesting issues for futher studies of the topic.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the municipal guidelines regarding the construction of the prerequisite "other living expenses", and how the construction of the prerequisite was constructed in relation to the legislation. The sample of the thesis was the Municipalities in Stockholm?s county. The empirical result was compiled with the hermeneutical method, and analyzed through a legal perspective and three different theoretical perspectives, as well as compared with previous studies. The theoretical perspectives were legal pluralism, bureaucracy, legitimacy and rule of law.

Our purpose was to study how care managers in practice evaluate needs in eldercare. A specific focus was set on elderly persons' sex, an area where former research show that decisions vary considerably. Were the care managers influenced in their decision making by the elderly person's sex? If so, in what ways? Were there variations in the definition of eldercare needs between the four chosen Municipalities. And, finally, how did the care managers handle set criteria and priorities in their evaluation of such needs?The study was based on literature as well as interviews with eight care managers, chosen from four Scanian Municipalities.We arrived at the conclusion that there is no specific difference in how the care managers evaluate eldercare needs in relation to sex..

In metropolitan areas where the exploitation pressure increases, also the importance to point out nature areas grows, both for the sake of outdoor life and for biodiversity conservation. Since nature conservancy and spatial planning constitute two different parts of the Municipalities land use control, a case study has been carried out in two Municipalities in the Stockholm region, Huddinge and Järfälla. Both these Municipalities have protected about one third of their land and today there are plans to repeal parts of the reserves to enable exploitation. This thesis shows ? from the theoretical concept of sustainable development ? officials, politicians and non-governmental organizations perspectives on questions concerning land use together with the work with nature reserves and repeals.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the mobile library development in Sweden since the start in Borås, Sweden in 1948. We have concentrated on three six-year periods. Our aim has been to describe a part of the mobile library development. We wanted to research the background of the said development. To do this we also studied the library and overall development in Sweden during the same years.