Kunskapsagendan för hållbar stadsutveckling - Nationella perspektivet

Report, 2016

This report presents an overview of national strategic knowledge- and research agendas and discusses them in relationship to the Knowledge Agenda for Sustainable Urban Development, developed by Mistra Urban Futures in cooperation with the tree largest cities Sweden (Fredriksson and Elias, 2015). The report aims to emphasize similarities and differences between the Knowledge Agenda for Sustainable Urban Development and strategic national policy documents, research agendas and calls in sustainable urban development. The structure of this report is based on the main themes highlighted in the Knowledge Agenda for Sustainable Urban Development. The first part discusses the role of the municipality as an actor of knowledge, and cooperation between academy and municipal. The second part of the report discusses societal issues and strategies for transformation concerning sustainable urban development. This part is divided into four themes, in line with the themes highlighted in the Knowledge Agenda. The first theme, Urbanisation, Migration and Segregation. Urbanisation is stated as an important societal issue for the cities and national actors. But the national actors emphasize more on the dynamic relationship between urban and rural compared to the Knowledge Agenda, which has more city oriented perspective. At the same time migration is seen as an important issue for the municipals, the national actors do not. The second theme, Transformation of the economic system handles the transformation from an industrial society to a knowledge based society, and what this transformation means for sustainable urban development. Both Knowledge Agenda and the national documents discuss issues concerning governance, highlighting that the preconditions for governing the city have changed. However, different national actors have different focus concerning these issues, where some highlight a need for more cooperation between different actors, others emphasize the risk that more collaborative governance can cause a democratic shortage. The third theme, Social polarisation and unity, social polarisation is mainly discussed in relationship to housing segregation in the national documents, while the municipal actors have a broader perspective on these issues. Societal unity and new social movements is highlighted as an important issue by the municipal actors, but is not explicitly discussed by the national actors. The last theme, Climate change, focuses on both strategies for reducing the effects on the climate, climate adaptation and resilience to handle climate related incidents. Concerning these issues, the consensus between different actors is rather substantial, and both the national and the municipal actors highlight climate change as a fundamental societal issue. However, the municipal actors have a partly different focus, highlighting distribution of responsibility as a more fundamental issue than the national actors.