This master thesis explores the nature of public participation as a central and most current subject in the field of urban planning. A first impression exposes a seemingly unanalyzed consensus on the values and benefits which public participation provides the process of urban planning. The city may be a concern to all its inhabitants; hence knowledge and opinions of the local public are of great importance for the urban development. But is there really something new to these assumptions, and are the advantages of increased public participation in urban planning always obvious?  By using action research as a main method, I have put myself into the context of the Swedish municipality of Nacka and their projects dealing with the development of public participation.

Background: The health of children and youth has decreased the last two decades. The Swedish government has decided to back a national plan for parenting support. The municipality of Tjörn is a part of national parental support project to identify the need and to improve the parental support in the municipality. Purpose: The purpose with this study was to identify experience and need of parental support among fathers with more than one child on Tjörn. Method: Five individual qualitative interviews were conducted with the fathers.

Alkohol är ett vanligt berusningsmedel i Sverige. Tidigare forskning har visat att familj och vänner påverkar ungdomars alkoholkonsumtion. Studiens syfte var att undersöka ungdomars upplevelse av vad som påverkade deras alkoholkonsumtion samt om skillnader fanns mellan landsbygd och stad. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten i undersökningen var Bronfenbrenners ekologiska modell. Metoden som användes var berättelser där ungdomar skrev om en situation där de druckit alkohol eller avstått samt öppna enkätfrågor.

The question is who should govern and administrate a municipality owned urban forest? Should societies and the public be invited to participatory planning, who are the interested parties, could they be treated like a group and what are their opinions on administration and management? The study is carried out in a municipal owned forest Vitberget Skellefteå that is widely used by associations and individuals for recreation and training.This has led to several discussions in the local media about the management of the forest, especially in connection to harvesting. The work undertaken here has been to identify who has any interest in the management of the area. After identifying the interested parties, a selection of the societies, schools and pre-schools that actively uses the area as well as random individuals met in the area was interviewed. The questions asked can be divided into six main groups:? Communication with the municipality?s managers for the area? Interference from other activities? Views on forest management? Views on nature conservation? The uniqueness of Vitberget? Development opportunitiesThe crucial factors identified as being needed to succeed in managing an urban forest are long-term administration, information and communication.

Abstract The planning of landscapes and towns has changed from a top-to-bottom perspective, including a focus on common interests, towards an inclusion of dialogue between planners and inhabitants of the planning area. In the countryside areas there are many interests which could be incorporated in such a dialogue. Still, the landowners have the final right to make the decisions for his or her property. The purpose of this paper is to examine how a dialogue for countryside development works and could be working, what participators of such dialogues are thinking about their right to direct and transform the landscape, and which roles the planners may take in such a context. With this background in mind, I also look back into the history with the intention to understand the situation of today.

Deciduous forests are, according to the National Environmental Quality Objectives, a priority area. Deciduous forests are rich in species and the occurrence of dead wood is an important factor for biodiversity. In order to identify valuable deciduous forests for bio-diversity, conservation needs good analyses and planning tools. Habitat models combined with geographic information systems can be used to study the spatial structure of suitable habitat. The Lesser spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos minor) has been proposed as an indicator species for deciduous forests, since this species is highly specialized on insect larvae in dead wood and requires large areas of deciduous-rich environments. Many riparian forest with high species richness and high nature conservation values are found along the Ume river in Umeå municipality.

AbstractObstacles or opportunities? ? A study of the experience of collaboration of social welfare secretaries and school staff.The purpose of this study is to illustrate the importance of the work with children and youth through the joint efforts between different authorities. The study deals with the collaboration between the social services and schools in the Ludvika municipality. The objective of the study is to investigate how teaching personnel and headmasters in compulsory schools and the social welfare secretaries in Ludvika, experience the collaboration, and how this works. On the basis of the objective, we have formulated some relevant questions; To what degree are schools aware of the model of collaboration, which is the basis for collaboration within the municipality, and are there any differences in awareness between different categories of employees? Other questions deal with differences in how the social services and schools experience the collaboration, discrepancies between different schools in this regard and if the respondents? experience any obstacles and/or opportunities by the collaboration.Collaboration is, and has been, a pressing issue for a long time in the public debate.

The culture center studied has gone from being organized by enthusiasts and ideals, to being institutionalized with a educational association responsible for the management. The questions discussed are ? how this change affects the active people in the house and what consequences these changes make for the institution of the house and for the regular management..

Killingen is an area situated on an island called Resarö in the municipality of Vaxholm. The areais covered with forests with a varied topography and a mosaic of environments. The municipalitywants to keep the area unexploited, for recreational purposes but what are the natural values inthe forests? The survey concluded that a mosaic of nature types had high values and could behosts for vulnerable species.As part of the study, measures that will improve the quality of the paths and bathing areas for thelocal population was proposed as well as means to heighten or preserve the natural values in thearea..

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.

AbstractThe aim of this study is to examine how individuals, part of a rural Christian parish,express their religiosity and beliefs in a Swedish context. Furthermore this study seeksto understand these religious expressions through different views on social construction,secularization and the privatization perspective, such as lived religion, in particular. Byusing qualitative interviews with 8 individuals analyzed with the theories mentionedabove my results show that secularization has provided many individuals with aChristian identity, however, not necessarily a Christian faith. Instead several of theparticipants show a self-developed religious expression not automatically connectedwith Christian religious practices. One of the participants has, despite a Christiansocialization, developed a non-religious identity.

The cocoa produced in Fiji is exported to industrialized countries for processing of the raw material. The Swedish organization Cocoa Bello is involved in a project to provide the Fijian cocoa farmers with knowledge as well as resources to enable local processing and to attain added value of the cocoa crop. The purpose of this study is to discover a field of application for the Fijian cocoa among the rural population, using an ethnographic design. We spent one week in Namau Settlement, Fiji, where we applied in-depth interviews and participant obser-vations in six families. We found a number of aspects affecting food choices, such as social, economical and cultural beliefs.

Hand hygiene compliance is one of the most important factors to prevent healtcare associated infections (HAI), which can cause unnessesary suffering, prelonged insitutional care, invalidity and higher mortality rate. It has been shown that despite regulations for hygiene compliances in healthcare, these are used unadequately. HAI affects 5-10 % of all patients in industrailized countries, in development countries the number is estimated to be up to 20 times higher. The aim of this study was to illustrate healthcareworkers hygiene compliances in patient care at a rural healthcarecentre in western India. Participant observation was used as a method, fieldnotes was taken for qualitative analysis.

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) was incorporated into the Swedish legislation in 2004 through the ordinance Förordningen om förvaltningenav kvaliteten på vattenmiljön (SFS 2004:660). The objective is that all water bodies shall reach a good status by the year 2015. In Sweden the comprehensive plans of the municipalities can play a large role in reaching these goals. A comprehensive plan deals with the long term water and land use of the municipality, which can facilitate an early consideration of water management in the planning process of the municipality. In Sweden five river basin districts have been established in accordance with the Water Framework Directive.

Around 85 percent of the total population in Sweden today lives in an urban environment. This means that the nature within the urban areas has come to play an important role for the human well being. At the broader picture, the nature within urban areas is profitable in many ways. It is therefore important for the municipalities around in Sweden to work for sustainability within the urban areas. Linköping adopted an environmental policy, in year 2001, from the delegate of the municipality.