earticle

영어

Angered is a suburb to the North East of Gothenburg in Sweden, constructed as part of the ‘Million programme’, a housing initiative taken by the Social Democratic government in the 1960s. The suburb has recently been acknowledged by investors for its increase in economically strong households and for its strategic location in the larger Gothenburg region. Municipal planners and politicians have jointly chosen Angered, among four other strategic spots, as developmental nodes in a ‘smart growth’ urban process. The municipality together with private developers will make heavy investments in Angered to revitalise the shopping centre and to construct a sports arena and a new hospital. At the same time existing entrepreneurs notice that their local trade organisation no longer engages its members and some businesses are moving out. Other entrepreneurs are more confident but wouldn’t mind minor changes to services and built environments. The objective here is to map whether the private investors and the municipality include local citizens and entrepreneurs in the ongoing revitalisation process. The discussion will refer to debates on urban revitalization, smart growth and urban density issues. Additionally, the paper will problematize the issue of top down programmes and their relation to local communities and local initiatives. In Sweden there has been an extensive questioning of such welfare programs because they tend to ‘put everything in its proper place’, as viewed from above, to the citizens involved. The new private-public investment project for Angered will be analysed in this paper from the same position: Are we seeing just another help-project on its move or does the new program empower the local community too? The analysis is based on interviews with private and municipal actors, as well as investigations of written documents on the planning process.