Politik och planering för ett blandat boende och minskad boendesegregation : ett mål utan medel?

Sammanfattning: Mixed housing environments are expected to create better life chances than homogeneous ones, at least for disadvantageous households. This conclusion has nourished policy and planning ideals of building neighbourhoods and reconstructing cities to become more socially mixed and less segregated. Much research has focused on the effects of these strategies at the individual and neighbourhood level. Less research has been engaged with the question of how these mixed areas are to come about. However, precisely this aspect of housing and social mix policies is in focus in this thesis. Firstly the study tries to answer how and why the Swedish social mix policy was launched in Sweden in the 1970s. Secondly, the housing market and housing policy’s have changed dramatically over the last couple of decades which make questions concerning the status of social mix policy today highly relevant. Are mixing ambitions still guiding new building and neighbourhood restructuring activities? Is the policy’s aim still to decrease levels of residential segregation and to obtain social equality?The thesis contributes to the understanding of why social mix is a policy goal and which urban problems the policy is supposed to solve. It draws on a series of studies of planning practices in the biggest Swedish cities but with a particular focus on policies and practices in Stockholm and Gothenburg. One conclusion is that the policy goal has been rather consistent over time but the measures to implement the policy have become weaker and fewer. Another conclusion is that although the goal is formulated by the State, its implementation has been and still is more or less entirely depending on the ambition of each municipality.