Förankring och Dialog : Kraftspelet mellan planering och demokrati

Sammanfattning: This thesis is a human geography study of how local planners prepared, implemented and followed up a dialogue with the inhabitants in Alby, a multicultural community. The planners based their work on the ambition that everything that is done to develop Alby should be anchored among the residents in a democratic manner. This thesis analyses this double interpretation and how it appears in the planners’ work.The study uses a combination of different action-theoretic approaches for analysing what the planners did. A normative approach is used together with genealogic approaches on power and rhetoric. To make use of these action theories in a multicultural community the thesis explores radical feminism (situated knowledge) and postcolonial theory.Methodologically, the study is based on participatory observation. It analyses how the planners anchor decisions using a subject–object approach. The approach steered the planners into a situation in which their administrative system-world grew at the expense of both a sustainable democratic development and losing contact with the life-world of the local inhabitants. During the meetings the planners came in contact with some local activists. From their situated knowledge, the activists gave practical examples on how to make the planners’ system-world more sensitive to the reality of the inhabitants. The thesis stresses the importance of a life-world perspective on local planning and the potential of local meetings, situated knowledge and phronesis to make the planners’ work sensitive to the reality of the inhabitants.