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.

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.

Urban densification as a planning strategy is of interest in the planning context of today. It is also seen as a part of the sustainable development. Urban densification as a concept is commonly used in the discussion of a sustainable development. Thus, the question about urban densification is an important challenge in the current planning context. A deeper understanding of the process which urban densification has developed from is necessary, since planners then will be more able to manage this challenge.

This thesis concerns the term contemporary history and its role in landscape architecture. Today?s contemporary history is defined as the planning and architecture connected to the 60s and 70s, in Sweden carried out as a large scale planning project called ?Miljonprogrammet?, which set out to build one million new residences in ten years. Initially, the term contemporary history and its complex of problem are examined. To deepen the picture of today?s situation, a historical review has been made, starting in early 1900s ending in 2000s concerning how different planning and architectural influences has varied through the years.

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.

Public participation in urban planning is meant to increase democracy in the planning process. Even though all citizens have the option to participate in urban planning debates, few seize their chance to partake. This thesis describes a study on how user needs are met and prioritized in design processes concerning urban planning. The aim was to determine whether user-centered design (UCD) methods could be used as an avenue for public participation in urban planning and ultimately invite more citizens into the planning process.The thesis details a design process where a team worked to develop Farsta, a suburb of Stockholm. The design problem was the question of how Farsta could become an attractive business location.

This study shows how city planners and politicians in Karlstad plans different parts of the city, what type of model/ city ideals they use when planning, and how it is expressed. The study was made using a qualitative method, were a discourse analysis was vital for the elected planning document and blog posts. Qualitative interviews were also made with five people with significant meaning, who hold different positions in the city planning of Karlstad. In the produced material, it appears that the city planners and politicians in Karlstad are planning for traditional city ideals as a foundation in the planning, with influence from new ideas as for example sustainable planning and economic growth. In some parts of the city a modern and rational planning remains.

The purpose of this thesis is to explain one aspect of how and why the development in the third world is lagging behind. The precondition is that development through an agricultural revolution is necessary and that all countries benefit from trading. But these two conditions are not met today. By using the urban-bias and the world system theory I have analysed how the situation appears to be according to the precondition. It appears that both the urban-bias and the world system theory are essential to understand how and why the situation in third world still has not reached the same development phase as most other countries.

Is it possible that by planning in a more sustainable way when building a new area, we can improve our environment?Most environmental problems are created in cities and therefore they should hold the solution. Through a more ecological urban planning a better foundation for sustainable housing could be created.This report follows the process in coming up with a proposal for a master plan for an area in Odense, Denmark. By going through principles for sustainable urban planning made by different organizations and persons and from these extract main principles, a background is founded to continue the proposal from.Denmark works a lot on expanding their green areas, maintain the existing ones and recreate what?s being destroyed as cities expand.

Stadsförnyelse i innerstadsnära läge. Utarbetning av en strukturplan för stadsdelen Rothenburgsort i Hamburg.

Urban planning in Sweden goes back to a prolonged tradition, and even since the beginning of the 16th century there´s been general plans for urban planning for cities in Sweden.Nowadays every municipality has a directive from the government to establish or re-new the general master plan covering the whole municipality every 4th year.The aim of this paper is to illustrate and shed light on the extent for the planning document and guidelines, and how they change from every active period and in what extent the provisional planning reaches its visions regarding the outcome of the actual city growth. This study was completed by studying the position of every apartment building that?s been constructed for the chosen area over the years of 2000 - 2014 and draw comparisons between the current master plan main visions regarding constructions ? and comparing the two separate visions to pin out the differences in the same subject.The result shows that there are some deviations from the plans but not as much as one would have thought in the city growth, and some deviations from the different planning documents. Some of the deviations was greater than others but overall the visions was about the same..

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the term attractiveness is interpreted in Swedish contemporary urban planning. The focus is to analyse how the term is discursively constructed and by this highlight the conceptions that exist around what makes a city attractive. We want to emphasize the importance of a deeper understanding of how attractiveness is used in urban planning and how the term is a part of the development of our cities. Given the use of attractiveness as a part of visionary goals for Malmö´s and other Swedish cities future development, our intention, therefore, is to enhance the understanding of what the use of attractiveness means in respect of the creation and construction of power relations in time and place. The framework of our analysis is based on the discourse theory approach and used as a way of understanding how urban ideals is discursively constructed.

Due to the growing population in Stockholm, some of the urban green areas are beingsubjected to exploitation. Hammarbyskogen is an urban forest in the south of Stockholm andis an example of a green area that is planned to be transformed into an urban environment.This paper investigates key qualities and values of an urban forest of Hammarbyskogenvalued by local inhabitants of the neighbourhoods of Hammarbyhöjden and Björkhagen in thesouth of Stockholm. In addition to that, the study seeks to investigate people?s perception ofthe planned development of the forest as well as investigate how these perceptions andqualities are being incorporated into the process of neighbourhood development.Using text analysis, interviews and discussion forums, findings have been made showing thatthe local inhabitants value the urban forest mostly for its ecological and recreational qualities.Regarding perception of the change, people are either positive or negative to the developmentwhich can be explained by people?s experienced sense of place and place attachment of thearea and the forest itself. The study has also shown that the urban planners rely on localinhabitants? view, as well as on expert knowledge during the process of planning.The results of the study contributes to a better understanding of why and for what purposesurban forests are important for the city dwellers..

The paper evaluates two housing proposals with Space syntax as method. The proposals are very different in a topological sense but are in a configural sense almost the same. This effect is because both proposals connect themselves to the existing configural structure of the city in the same way. Neither of them takes advantages of the most integrated streets in the existing structure and use them to concentrate pedestrian and car flows to the streets or points which are intended to be the most urban areas. The knowledge of Space syntax and this evaluation puts focus on the pour understanding among architects and planners of what effect urban design proposals will have..

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..