Planning, Projects, Practice

Planning, Projects, Practice A Human Geography of the Stockholm Local Investment Programme in Hammarby Sjöstad Jonas R Bylund Department of Human Geography Stockholm University 2006 Abstract Programmes and policies to support ecological sustainable development and the practice of implementation is a question of innovation rather than known and taken for granted procedure. This thesis argues a priori models concerning stability in the social sciences, and human geography especially, are less able to help us understand this practice and planning in such unstable situa- tions. Problematic in common understandings of planning and policy implementation concerning sustainability are the dualisms between physical-social spaces and between rationality-contingency. The first dualism makes it hard to grasp the interaction between humans and nonhumans. The second dualism concerns the problem of how to capture change without resorting to reductionism and explanaining the evolving projects as either technically, economically, or culturally rational. The scope of the thesis is to test resources from actor-network theory as a means of resolving these dualisms. The case is the Stockholm Local In- vestment Programme and the new district of Hammarby Sjöstad. The programme’s objective was to support the implemention of new technologies and systems, energy efficiency and reduced resource-use as well as eco-cycling measures. The case-study follows how the work with the programme unfolded and how administrators’ efforts to reach satisfactory results was approached. In doing this, the actors had to be far more creative than models of implementation and traditional technology diffusion seem to suggest. The recommendation is to take the instrumentalisation framing the plasticity of a project in planning seriously – as innovativeness is not a special but the general case. Hence, to broaden our tools and understanding of planning a human geography of planning projects is pertinent. Keywords: Stockholm, LIP, Hammarby Sjöstad, Sustainability, Innovation, Planning, Policy, Translation, Actor-Network Theory, Laboratory, Project, Urban Specialists. © Copyright The Author and the Department of Human Geography, 2006. All rights reserved. Department of Human Geography Stockholm University S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden ISSN 0585-3508 ISBN 91-7155-279-0 Printed by Intellecta DocuSys AB, Nacka, Sweden 2006. Cover illustration: Jonas R Bylund Contents Figures 5 Acknowledgements 7 1 Introduction 9 Sources and Delimitation 12 Linear Order 14 2 Performance Test of Actor-Network Theory 16 Technology Implementation in Viscous Structures 17 Human Geography and Imagining Society 21 Mediators, or Discarding the Idea of Inanimate Things 25 The Principles 30 Society-Making with Quasi-Objects 32 3 Reconstructing the Approach to Planning 37 A Questionable Evoutionary Story of Planning 37 The Creative Character of Planning 43 Formateurs 48 4 Enter Sustainability 51 The Operationalisation of Ecological Modernisation 55 The Local Investment Programme 58 The Innovativeness of LIP 60 LIP as Incremental Innovation 60 LIP as Radical Innovation 63 5 Enticement 64 Policies and Programmes 67 6 Inscription 71 The Eco-Cycling Districts 71 3 Hammarby Sjöstad 73 The Environmental Programme 74 The Strategy 78 The Test-field 81 The Government’s Response 82 Translation and Delegation 84 7 Instrument 89 Technology Procurement 91 Co-operative Procurement 91 Knowledge Transference 92 Environmental Load Profile 92 Development and Demonstration Projects 93 Contests 94 Instrumental Complexity 95 Middle-ranges and Learning Curves 98 8 Counter Programmes 102 Local Projects 104 LIP Rules 104 Creativity 108 The 1998 Municipal Election 109 Developers’ Rationales 111 Counter Programmes and the Ballistic Diffusion Model 114 9 Exit LIP 117 The Promise of Procurement 120 Procurement in action 123 Individual Measurement Systems 123 Solar Heat in Large Systems 125 Gas-stoves 126 The Final Report 127 A Note on the Global LIP 130 New Technology and Laboratories 132 10 Characteristics of the Case 140 Translating Ecological Modernisation 142 The Local Staging 145 Escaping the Experiment 146 Procurement as Framing 147 Power of Procurement 149 Text and Materiality 150 Elements of the Trial 151 4 11 Perspectives on Planning Projects 154 Sisyphus and Daedalus 154 Bubbles in the Wallpaper 157 Boundary Bashing? 160 Concluding Remarks 165 Appendix A: Glossary 168 Appendix B: Lists on Projects From the Final Report 173 Appendix C: Timeline Overview for the Stockholm Local Investment Programme 183 References 184 Figures Figure 1.1. A map of inner-city Stockholm with Hammarby Sjöstad Figure 1.2. A view within Hammarby Sjöstad Figure 1.3. A very generalised illustration of the main question for this investigation Figure 2.1. A schematic interpretation of Bourdieu’s social space and fields of power-relations Figure 2.2. The duality of society and space as generally conceived in human geography Figure 2.3. Lefebvre’s triad of material, mental, and social space Figure 2.4. Examples of common dualisms at play when conceptualising space Figure 2.5. The modern dimension of nature and society with a nonmodern dimension added Figure 3.1. A revised figure of a project’s ontological variability Figure 6.1. A map from the Hammarby Sjöstad Comprehensive Plan 2003 Figure 6.2. The Hammarby Model of eco-cycling Figure 6.3. A simplified diagram of the project’s social topography Figure 7.1. The route of the applications Figure 7.2. The spectrum of relatively stable and relatively unstable artefacts Figure 7.3. The almost-objects added to the revised spectrum Figure 7.4. The learning curve 5 Figure 8.1. The Environmental Load Profile’s system boundaries Figure 9.1. The ideal procurement process Figure 9.2. The set of movements in a procurement Figure 9.3. Excerpt translated from the final report tables on the measur- able environmental effects for the Eco-cycling Districts Figure 9.4. The procurements made in the Eco-cycling Districts measure Figure 9.5. Number of projects and utilised subsidy within the instrument Development and Demonstration Projects Figure 9.6. Monkey business Figure 9.7. The intelligent GlasshouseOne at Hammarby Sjöstad which says ‘Hi!’ Figure 10.1. The rotated spectrum of relatively stable and relatively unstable artefacts Figure 10.2. The figure illustrates what the nonmodern dimension means from the point of view of calculative agents Figure 11.1. Olsson’s a=b in my interpretation 6 Acknowledgements I am, in the last instance, fully responsible for authoring this text. But the piece of work it has become, the product, would have been something quite different and less joyful without the involvement of the following characters. Thank you! In Stockholm, I would like to thank Nils Borg and Borg & Co, Gre- gor Hackman and the SLIP-Council in Stockholm; Mats Dryselius, Göran Lundberg, and Agneta Persson, for support and discussions. Bo Lenntorp and Elisabeth Lilja, for the supervision. Andrew Byerley, for the invaluable and sensible proof-reading of my Swenglish. Juan Velásquez, for comments. Stefan Ene, for help with cartographic issues. Collegeues at and around the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, for stimulating discussions and reflections in the corridors. Jan-Olof Drangert, for the com- mentary on an early draft presented at the ‘final seminar.’ Anna Green and Örjan Svane, for information exchange. Anna Bylund, for cover and layout issues and for a sofa. Lena Bylund, for intellectual support and a sofa. Lars Bylund, for discussions on energy issues and support. Rebecca Fleischer- Medici and family, Sophie Naess and family, and Cecilia Stalín for more sofas and company during field-work. Formas and the Stockholm Local Investment Programme, for funding the main part of the research behind the thesis. The Stockholm City Planning Agency, GlashusEtt in Hammarby Sjöstad, and Fortum, for the rights to use their maps and images. In Berlin, many thanks go to Die Berliner Hedonisten, Dirk Gebhardt, Thomas Bürk-Matsunami, Matthias Naumann, and Kim Förster, for reading drafts and discussions on geography, life, and everything over the years. Judith Utz, for taking it down to earth and pushing me to make some sense of it. Susanne Dähner, Andrea Nieszery, and Frederik Bom- bosch, for reflections on writing and academic work. Felix Kiesbauer, for conversations about all things weird and wonderful about politics and technology. Sibylle Mühlke, for the Mensa Sessions on open source, lan- guage, and learning issues. Matthias Hühn, for the sketchy drawings in the cover picture. The people over at the Zentralbuero Lab. Scattered around the world: Salvatore ‘Saed’ Engel-di Mauro, for the hybrid view on European research and politics. Arish Dastur, for the op- portunity to entice Columbia’s planning students. Daniel Genberg, for on-the-go comments on things. Merethe Roos, for discussions on episte- mology, the arts, and theology. Avigail Manneberg, for comments on the cover-pic and discussions on creative work. With sincere appreciation of the ongoing disputes on how to write a text, what code is and how it works: Bråkfia. Jonas R Bylund, Frescati, May 1st 2006 7 8 1 Introduction … ‘technology’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memo- rably defined it, is ‘stuff that doesn’t work yet.’ We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would of- ten ‘crash’ when we tried to use them. (Adams 1999) Planning, policy-making, and human geography have gone hand in hand for quite some time. This thesis is about how to conceptualise planning projects and policy implementation. It is done by way of a particular case in Stockholm. Through the early days and most of the research phase the thesis-project had the working title The Production of Urban Sustainable Space, which reflects the intention to investigate how a city adapts to ecological sustainability.

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