Visby is a city that at first glance is of medieval origins. The popular image of scientists today is that the city was formed in the Middle Ages. According to some of the researchers Visby was formed during the Viking Age, it is based on the basis that the area has been used for a long period. Urban development in the Nordic countries is complex and there are different opinions as to why the Nordic cities emerge. It is important to shed light on the underlying process on why cities are emerging to provide clarity as to why Visby city is emerging.

This thesis examines and evaluates user boards in Swedish public schools from a democratic perspective. In order to evaluate whether the democratic values are fulfilled five different democratic ideals are selected to serve as a theoretical fundament. These ideals derive from the Swedish Government Official Reports that preceded the reform of user boards in schools, and are identified as the following: participation, dialogue, trust, democratic schooling and influence. The study is based on cases and involves two schools with user boards and two comparative schools with informal parental influence, so called school advisory boards. The study concludes that the main difference between the two types of parental influence is the level of formality.

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.

Projektet är en strategi för att stegvis uppgradera och förstärka offentliga delar av Holma i Malmö, i takt med att området byggs ut med nya bostadskvarter. Arbetet tar sin grund i vikten av spontana och planerade möten mellan människor, utgående från möjligheterna i strukturen av ett bostadsområde från senare delen av miljonprogrammet. Punktvisa ingrepp innefattar ett Folkets hus, en cykelpump, ett område för urban odling samt tillförsel av lokaler för publika funktioner i marknivå..

The paper is a thesis made by three students in the engineering program at Jönköping School of engineering. The thesis was overseen by the urban planning office and features data from Jönköping County.The purpose of the thesis is to improve future central districts by improvement of work methods. The aim of this thesis is, through an evaluation of process mapping, develop a model for systematical work methods with better experience feedback in the urban planning. The following three questions have been answered:? How is the process mapping of the urban planning in Jönköping County built today and how did it affect the current district Kålgården?? How can the urban planning of Jönköping improve with a more systematical work method with better experience feedback?? How can critics elaborate the developed method to make it enough stable and in general applicable method to enforce on future districts?Literature studies and interviews were made to review the work methods of the office of urban planning as well as how their experience feedback works.

Denna rapport behandlar utvärdering av urbana ekosystemtjänster på stadsdelsnivå. Eftersom ökad urbanisering leder till ökad belastning på urbana ekosystem är det viktigt att både exploatering och etablering av grönområden sker på ett hållbart sätt där ekologiska, sociala och ekonomiska faktorer inkluderas. Detta kan delvis uppnås genom att villkor i verktyg och certifieringssystem inkluderar aspekter för urbana ekosystemtjänster. Det undersökts hur certifieringssystemen BREEAM Communities och CASBEE for Urban Development samt verktyget Grönytefaktormetoden behandlar sådana urbana ekosystemtjänster. Analysen utgår från en föreslagen kategorisering av urbana ekosystemtjänster.

What is a city? What do we mean when we describe something as urban? In what way should we build the city so that we can achieve a good environment for our own generation and for generations to come? These questions are constantly of interest and they are frequently discussed. It is also important to have considered these questions when working with city-planning. This essay contains a description of and reflections about the recurrent questions in today?s debate about the city and city-planning.

In Italy in 1528 the famous author Baldassare Castiglione published the book Il Cortegiano. In words Castiglione portraits the ideal courtiers and provides a lot of advice on how to achieve the ultimate courtier manner. For example he introduces and explains the words sprezzatura and grazia. His advice spread from Italy and influenced the courts around Europe. My purpose with this study has been two folded. Firstly, I have analysed Castigliones Il Cortegiano in order to examine his vision of virtues and ideals.

This is a final thesis in landscape planning, at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). The study examines the current phenomenon of amenity migration and the international discourse applicability of the a "Countryside dream" in a small neighborhood in Käglinge, part of the transit-oriented community Oxie just outside of Malmö in the southern part of Sweden. The critical starting point of the study is the how many planners idealize the dense city with its positive proximity qualities. However, since the late 1900s, many people have instead started to idealize living in more rural or naturally appealing landscapes, often just outside a bigger city, with good transit possibilities (both by car and bus as well as by train). The phenomenon of amenity migration ? the migration to a new, more appealing everyday environment considered to have more amenities, is very relevant today since many smaller communities are becoming more transit-oriented, allowing the inmigrants to work in some bigger, dense town while living in a small-scale, less dense semi-rural community. More dense transit-oriented communities are however also an ideal to planners in Sweden, but to what extent can Käglinge in Oxie ? a neither rural nor urban community - fulfill a possible countryside dream, and what role does the train station have in the in-migrants everyday life? The study has a theoretical starting point in literature regarding amenity migration, countryside ideals, representations of the countryside and the possible migrants themselves, giving a broad perspective on these related issues. The case study of Käglinge in Oxie is then presented, including interviews with Käglinges in-migrants.

This study examines counselors understanding of body fixation (alt: body image fixation) as a social problem among young women aged 15-25 years. Earlier research on this subject highlights the standards and ideals placed on the female body where happiness is associated with a slim body figure. Research has shown that young women that compare their own bodies with others are at higher risk at developing an unhealthy relationship with their body, which can lead to eating disorders. The data for this study was collected through semi-structured interviews with nine counselors from youth clinics, schools and primary healthcare. The results were interpreted and analysed in the light of social constructionist perspective as developed by Berger & Luckmann and Loseke's social constructionist definition of social problems.

The urban heat island is an area restricted to a city center where the temperatureis higher than its surrounding environment. The greatest temperature difference isfound at night when the weather is calm and the sky is clear of clouds. There are twomajor causes behind this phenomena and the first one is the use of energy forheating of houses. The heat leaks through the walls of the buildings and warms upthe surrounding mass of air. The second one is the use of building material whichstore the suns radiation on daytime and releases the heat during night.

Hur kan urban odling skapa nya sociala nätverk mellan människor och få dem att mötas i staden? Litteraturstudien har till syfte att undersöka vilka studier som gjorts kring urban odling och socialt kapital, med fokus på överbryggande socialt kapital. Begrepp som community garden, community, kolonilott samt socialt kapital förklaras inledningsvis för att skapa ett ramverk till litteraturstudien. Socialt kapital kan förklaras som nätverk och sociala kopplingar mellan människor, och överbryggande socialt kapital är då sådana nätverk mellan människor från olika grupper i samhället. En historisk återblick ges kring hur socialt kapital, med fokus på överbryggande socialt kapital, har skapats både i Sverige genom kolonirörelsen och i USA genom olika stadsodlingsprogram från slutet av 1800-talet och fram till idag. Därefter refereras ett antal studier som undersökt kopplingar mellan socialt kapital och kollektiv odling, samt ett antal studier som beskriver kollektiv och urban odling kopplat till nätverk och möten, utan att använda begreppet socialt kapital.

The aim of this study is to better understand the Swedish concept of ?förebyggande socialt arbete?, preventive social work. I have conducted eleven qualitative interviews with different key persons and skaters, together with participant observation. During the process of analyzing the material I have used Randall Collins´ concepts of interaction ritual chains together with Jean Laves and Etienne Wengers concept of situated learning. The answers could be split up in three areas, first those who regard prevention work as building good things for the future.

In this essay a proposal of city renewal is made for the new train station area built on highly productive agricultural land in Landskrona. The proposal is based on how the situation for the agricultural land in terms of exploitation looks like today and also on theories of urban governance to find out why the area turned out the way it did..

The importance of daylight for humans has been known for a rather long time. Applying this knowledge in the science of urban planning is not very common, at least not in Stockholm, Sweden. Living in a country far from the equator with great differences between daylight and darkness during the year, daylight gets even more important for our wellbeing. This study aims to highlight the subject of daylight planning and contribute to the discussion about how to include daylight in the process of urban planning. By critically observing a new built district in Stockholm and applying guidelines of how to use daylight planning, this paper shows how important it is to include daylight planning early in the process.