Department of Human Geography

In this study we study how homosexuality has legally gone from exclusion to inclusion in migration law and what ideological understandings that underpin this inclusion. The data corpus of
the study consisted of the preparatory work concerning same-sex sexuality, cohabitation and migration. Data was coded for patterns concerning the public administrative understandings of same-sex sexuality as described in the preparatory works. The coding was theoretically driven by critical and Marxist approaches to ideology. Conducting a thematic analysis, four themes were identified in the data. The overall finding is that the preparatory works give precedence to sexuality in terms of disposition (läggning) when it is linked to identity and intensions to engage in a long-term relationship. This means that alternative sexual identities and practices not compatible with the ”heterosexual matrix” have been excluded from the ideological lens. The ideological focus in the preparatory works could be seen as a reflection of the capitalist system, where some social categories are viewed as desirable to include in a capitalist society.

Abstract:  This paper presents an argument for considering issues of class in analyses of communicative planning projects. In these projects, class interests tend to be obscured by the contemporary preoccupation with the class-ambiguous category of “community”. Through a case study of a project of urban redevelopment at King's Cross in London, we conceptualize and map class interests in an urban redevelopment project. Three aspects of the planning process that contain clear class effects are looked at: the amount of office space, the flexibility of plans, and the appropriation of the urban environment as exchange or use value. These aspects structure the urban redevelopment but are external to the communicative planning process. The opposition to the redevelopment has in the planning discourse been articulated as “community”-based rather than in class-sensitive terms. We finally present three strategies for reinserting issues of class into planning theory and practice.

The production of space contains an antagonism between a use-value relation and an exchange-value relation. In this paper these categories are used to analyse two empirical cases from Bergen, Norway. The first case concerns a public debate in 2005, about whether Clear Channel should be allowed to install advertising boards in the city. The second case concerns a debate in 2007, about whether Bergen should establish retail chain-free zones in the city centre. This paper argues for the importance of understanding the preconditions for these processes and debates.

Inspired by state theory and in particular Nicos Poulantzas, this article claims that spatial planning should be seen neither as autonomous (subject) nor merely an expression of something else (thing), but rather grasped as a place for condensation of social relations. The notion of dialectics is used in order to grasp relations between planning and other aspects and social relations. From this, we can outline five theses, claiming that planning (1) is constituted by conflicts which are grounded in social relations, (2) is never a neutral place, (3) contains neither a ‘dark’ nor a ‘bright’ side, (4) and is changing and being changed by the world and also that (5) political alliances should be made between planners and non-planners who want the world to change in similar directions.

It is common knowledge that crisis also signifies opportunity and opens spaces for change. When responding to the current economic crisis, is urban planning seizing this opportunity? This article investigates the case of the Swedish city of Malmö and explores its responses to the crisis by looking dialectically at the crisis, municipal planning policy and real-estate capital. In this article, the local state and urban planning are regarded as social relations, with the aim of going beyond traditional formulations that oppose market (neoliberal) and state intervention (Keynesianism) as the main focus for crisis management. Against this background, the article shows that the 2008 crisis was met in Malmö by an active municipality that confirmed the existing visions and tendencies, rather than exploiting the crisis as a moment for changes and transformation. The article seeks to explain this by looking at the social relations that have constituted the urban policies in Malmö for the past two decades.

This chapter uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to conceptualise changes that have occurred in the urban development in the Swedish city of Malmö. The concepts of CDA and its philosophical foundations in Critical Realism are discussed, and linked with the methodology of dialectics. The two texts Västra Hamnen – City of Tomorrow (the Western Harbour – City of Tomorrow) and Områdesfakta för Malmö (Area facts, Malmö) are subject for analysis, and are discussed in relation to each other and also to extra-discursive underlying structures. Through the analysis, the notions of class and change are given priority. Indeed, CDA allows conceptualising class relations in Malmö grasping simultaneously change and non-change, ´fluidity´ and´permanence´.

I norske byer har kapitalens behov formet terrenget. Boligsektoren har gjennom den nyliberale revolusjonen blitt transformert. Fra i stor grad å være et regulert gode for folk flest er den primært blitt et objekt for kapitalakkumulasjon. Dette har også endret måten vi selv ser på boligen, samt premissene i politiske diskusjoner om bolig.

Abstract
This thesis aims to investigate the dialectics between urban planning and policy on the one hand and economic change and crises in the city of Malmö on the other, with a focus on both the city in general and the specific district of Western Harbour.
Malmö provides a (highly) fascinating place to investigate relations between urban and economic change. The city embraced the industrial path longer than many other Western cities, only to crash into a severe crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the mid-1990s the city embraced a “post-industrial” strategy, and from this point onward urban changes became resolute and drastic. Less than a decade later the image of the city had fundamentally changed. But the international economy that served as foundation for the post-industrial city proved to be crisis-prone, and the 2008 crisis especially called this urban-economic arrangement into question.
This thesis answers two broad research questions: how did Malmö respond to (the “industrial” as well as the “current” economic) crises? What characterises Malmö´s transformation from an industrial to a post-industrial city and which strategies have been mobilised? Based on semi-structured interviews, written material and secondary sources (in particular municipal planning and policy documents), four theoretical papers seek to investigate these issues. I argue that Malmö met the current crisis by actively continuing to develop the “post-industrial” city that had evolved starting in the mid-1990s. The dissertation then draws parallels with the city response to the “industrial” crisis, and finds interesting similarities. Malmö, then and now, met the crisis by “building more of the same”. The dissertation also investigates the metamorphosis the city has gone through, and argues that class is a crucial component that must be understood in this process: not only in terms of distribution of money and wealth, but also in term of the production of the city. One strategy that has become important for Malmö has been to highlight “green” and “environmental” parts of the urban development to get out of the “industrial crisis”. The thesis conceptualises this in terms of a “green fix”.
Theoretically the paper builds on four (related) fields of inquiry: i) urban theory, ii) dialectics, iii) crisis theory, and iv) planning and state theory. The latter two have undergone more thorough investigation, while I argue that discussions on (Marxists’) crisis theories within human geography would benefit from a broadening of the current perspective, and that urban planning should be conceptualised as a “condensation of social relations”. (Less)

This paper investigates the dialectics between urban planning, economic crisis and the build environment by looking at how the city of Malmö (Sweden) has responded to two different crises. First, the so-called industrial crisis was met with more industrial policies that exacerbated the problems and led the city into a severe crisis in the early 1990s. Then Malmö inverted its strategy and embraced the 'post-industrial city'. Nowadays, as the 2008 crisis has not seemed to have disappeared and the current economic situation is 'uncertain', the official rhetoric in Malmö is seemingly as optimistic as ever, as a new congress/concert hall, new shopping centres and new hotels are being built: the production of the post-industrial city continues with full force. By investigating the city-crisis dialectics and discussing theories on crisis and crisis management, inspired by Marx, Schumpeter and Keynes, this paper asks the question as to whether Malmö today is making a similar mistake as in the 1980s, that is, reproducing yesterday's city.

The Seventeen Contradictions is an x-ray of tensions, trends and tendencies in capital and capitalism that empowers us to look forward. Taking the still ongoing 2008 economic crisis as a starting point, Harvey investigates how the capitalist economy that produces such crises is embedded in contradictions. Seventeen of these are discussed throughout the book.