Buser M, K C (2013) Swedish poverty: An oxymoron? Taking issue with social sustainability in urban renewal. In: Smith, S D and Ahiaga-Dagbui, D D (eds.) Proceedings of 29th Annual ARCOM Conference, 2-4 September 2013, Reading, UK.
Abstract
Many global cities are struggling to align urban renovation with social sustainability. In particular, solutions to the imbalance between rich and poor neighbourhoods have been difficult to find. This is also the case with the Swedish cities of Gothenburg and Malmoe. Recently large contractors have become involved with this issue, claiming they can provide social sustainability on a commercial basis. Many studies have shown that focusing on providing employment, improving social infrastructure and leisure facilities is not enough to rehabilitate the disadvantaged neighbourhoods. A framework for understanding social sustainability is proposed to facilitate further examination of such issues by analysing three biographic accounts of residents of deprived Swedish suburbs. Using critical discourse analysis, the empirical material builds on the three narratives: 1) An account of a childhood and homeless people leaving in a segregated neighbourhood; 2) the biography of an immigrant boy breaking out of the suburb environment and becoming a football star; and 3) an account of adolescence in Gothenburg and the discovery of the city centre in contrast to her home suburb. All the accounts indicate that employment and the presence of functional infrastructures did not prevent the stigmatisation linked to the authors' residential areas. These accounts could therefore help urban developers to better understand the complex and predominantly culturally oriented set of challenges when creating social sustainability. A bottom-up approach is provided by these auto-biographical texts that could enhance innovative input to contractors' concepts of social sustainability to include issues of integration and differentiation of the type of poverty that impact contemporary Sweden.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | contractor's business concept; social sustainability; urban renovation; discourse analysis |
| Index terms: | differentiation, bottom-up approach, urban renewal, presence, city centre, narrative, critical discourse analysis, social sustainability, immigrant, integration, renovation, residential area, Sweden, poverty, employment, becoming |
| Subjects: | organization, zoning, urban planning, data analysis and analytics, environmental science, management, renovation and retrofit, post-disaster and reconstruction, qualitative and interpretive research, Geography, organizational analysis, demography, sociology, philosophical process, communities and social development, infrastructure and transport systems |
| Topics: | Stakeholder Management, Sustainability, Governance, Research Practice, Geographical Context, Engineering Principles, Organizational Design, Urban Studies, Human Resources, Ethics |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here