Urban Processes and Global Competition. Enabling factors for mutual urban and economic development Norra Älvstranden in Göteborg

Doktorsavhandling, 2004

Planning and re-development of the former shipyard and harbour areas in Göteborg represent an attempt where the new urban web is anchored in a corresponding development of user needs. This thesis examines the conditions for urban planning and development of an urban growth node in the form of an innovative cluster at Lindholmen. Via a tailor-made institutional structure, the City of Göteborg created a capacity for integrated urban and economic development. Urban planning, construction and finance regarding the riverbank area are facilitated in this forum. This case illustrates the strategic dependency between discourses of cluster/innovation and the creation of places with reflexive qualities. The development is taken on mutually between many actors, representing society, corporations and universities. The complex and non-linear conditions of this process are welded together with rational/instrumental discourses of urban design and development via a temporary reflexive forum. The observations indicate a revised discourse for urban planning and development, which illustrates structures of ‘enabling’ or ‘guided development’. In the thesis this is referred to as a dynamic place initiative, with a following set of generative conditions where resources for mutual investments are generated in a qualifying territorial network development process. Synergies are created via a dynamic process brief in which corporate needs and wishes, the rational processes of the public planning system, market tests, and financing are interactively welded together in a iterative process.