Butiker i fjällen : Grundläggande kommersiell servicei Vilhelmina kommuns glesbygd

This work concerns the basic commercial service structure in the sparsely populated areas of Vilhelmina municipality in northern Sweden. It describes the municipal planning strategies developed to maintain the existing service structure. To properly evaluate the planning strategies used, it describes the geographical distribution of basic commercial services in the municipality’s sparsely populated areas and how accessible these services are to residents. It describes the municipality’s comprehensive plan regarding the sections concerning the availability of basic commercial services. It contains an interview where civil servants in Vilhelmina municipality elucidates on the reasons behind the adoption of these goals and strategies. The study reveals that the municipality is characterized by large geographical distances and an influential tourism industry in its western areas, which are currently undergoing a period of intensive exploitation, with periods of high demand for services. These characteristics affects the basic commercial service of the municipality by ensuring that it’s much stronger in the sparsely populated areas of the western half than the eastern half of the municipality, outside the boundaries of its principal city. Due to this the municipality has developed a comprehensive plan that encourages decentralized development of basic commercial services in rural areas. The plan describes how they’ve established “core areas”, where the current amount of available service will be preserved through the controlled development of assembled built environments and the strengthening of the public service infrastructure. The municipality hopes that these planning structures will lead to a long-term sustainable rural development, which will foster a strong basic commercial service structure in its sparsely populated areas