Transcending the rural-urban meme: Hammarkullen – a landscape caught in-between?

Abstract

People's different relations towards their environment are always the result of how they perceive it and how different spatialities are ascribed symbolic meaning. Taking into account these relations when formulating policies aimed at solving various problems could offer valuable knowledge for more sustainable planning and management. In certain areas, however, achieving this goal might prove extra problematic due to the preconceived vision of how problems associated with certain spatialities ought to be handled. Hammarkullen, a suburb of Gothenburg, is an extreme example of this. For decades facing socioeconomic and structural problems, the struggles of Hammarkullen could be described as a "wicked problem". Many programs have been undertaken to address it, the latest of which is one of Sweden's largest EU-projects within urban development. In light of the considerable criticism it has received, we evaluated its inadequacy to solve the identified problems through three case studies. We conclude that a major contributing factor is the urban bias impregnating the design of urban development projects. It happens because the concept of "urbanity" is not one-dimensional (there are at least 40 attributes defining it); moreover it is juxtaposed "rurality" as its conceptual counterpart. Since any of the constitutive attributes is neither fully "rural" nor "urban", different spatialities assume manifold overlapping combinations. Although Hammarkullen has an urban morphology, many of its attributes fall within the conceptual range of "rurality", and should be addressed accordingly. However, since urbanity is most often viewed as morphology, the "urban shell" of Hammarkullen inadvertently prompts "urban" development projects. In that light, we resort to a landscape approach as an alternative conceptual tool to circumvent the rural-urban impasse in problem-solving. As a relational, non-essentialist technique, a landscape approach has the potential to capture the individual needs of each spatiality, including those that are not necessarily aligned with a conceptual rural-urban axis.

Full text

Transcending the rural-urban meme:
Hammarkullen – a landscape caught in-between
Mirek Dymitrow a; René Brauer b;
Gun Holmertz c; Biljana Apostolovska-Tosevska d;
Fredrik Holmberg e and Lars Johansson f
a Department of Economy and Society – Unit for Human Geography, School of Business, Economics and Law,
University of Gothenburg, P.O. Box 630, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden; Email: mirek.dymitrow@geography.gu.se
b Department of Engineering Design and Production, History of Industrialization & Innovation Group, Aalto University,
P.O. Box 14100, FI–00076 Aalto, Helsinki, Finland; Email: rene.brauer@aalto.fi
c Caritas Sweden – Branch Gothenburg,
P.O. Box 2150, Stockholm, Sweden; Email: gun.holmertz@telia.com
d Faculty for Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Institute for Geography, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University,
Gazi Baba b.b., 1000-Skopje, Republic of Macedonia; Email: biljana.apostolovska@gmail.com
e Göteborgs Stad (City of Gothenburg), Örgryte-Härlanda Stadsdelsförvaltning,
P.O. Box 170 94, 402 61 Gothenburg, Sweden; Email: fholmberg@outlook.com
f GIS Division, Fortum Distribution AB – Branch Karlstad,
P.O. Box 2087, 650 02 Karlstad, Sweden; Email: lars.erik.johansson@parterns.fortum.com
Abstract
People’s different relations towards their environment are always the result of how they perceive it and
how different spatialities are ascribed symbolic meaning. Taking into account these relations when
formulating policies aimed at solving various problems could offer valuable knowledge for more
sustainable planning and management. In certain areas, however, achieving this goal might prove extra
problematic due to the preconceived vision of how problems associated with certain spatialities ought
to be handled. Hammarkullen, a suburb of Gothenburg, is an extreme example of this. For decades
facing socio-economic and structural problems, the struggles of Hammarkullen could be described as a
“wicked problem”. Many programs have been undertaken to address it, the latest of which is one of
Sweden’s largest EU-projects within urban development. In light of the considerable criticism it has
received, we evaluated its inadequacy to solve the identified problems through three case studies. We
conclude that a major contributing factor is the urban bias impregnating the design of urban
development projects. It happens because the concept of “urbanity” is not one-dimensional (there are
at least 40 attributes defining it); moreover it is juxtaposed “rurality” as its conceptual counterpart.
Since any of the constitutive attributes is neither fully “rural” nor “urban”, different spatialities assume
manifold overlapping combinations. Although Hammarkullen has an urban morphology, many of its
attributes fall within the conceptual range of “rurality”, and should be addressed accordingly.
However, since urbanity is most often viewed as morphology, the “urban shell” of Hammarkullen
inadvertently prompts “urban” development projects. In that light, we resort to a landscape approach
as an alternative conceptual tool to circumvent the rural-urban impasse in problem-solving. As a
relational, non-essentialist technique, a landscape approach has the potential to capture the individual
needs of each spatiality, including those that are not necessarily aligned with a conceptual rural-urban
axis.
Keywords: rural–urban, development programs, wicked problem, non-essentialism, landscape.
Dymitrow, M., Brauer, R., Holmertz, G., Apostolovska-Toševska, B., Holmberg, F. and
Johansson, L. (2014): Transcending the rural-urban meme: Hammarkullen – a landscape caught in-
between? Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape, 8–12 September
2014, Gothenburg, Sweden.