Sustainable urban districts: Identifying success factors and their (potential) implications for the transformation of Sege Park, Malmö

This thesis identifies factors for success and un-success in European sustainable urban development projects and subsequently aims to correlate them with the characteristics and practices of an on-going project, concluding in a set of policy recommendations. Worldwide urbanisation brings a concentration of activities contributing to environmental degradation and social injustice, which implies the need for implementing sustainable development practices in urban planning. Several examples of sustainability-niched experiment districts are found in Europe and in this study four of them were examined through a structured literature review. Results showed that factors impacting the outcomes of the projects were clustered in five broad categories: political/policy, project governance, financial/economic, technical/design and resident/citizen factors. Recurring factors, also implied in the process of the on-going development of Sege Park in Malmö involved multi-scale knowledge transfer, unified leadership, continuity in communication and funding, reflexivity, market fluctuations, design and lifestyle/affluence. By applying a transition management perspective to these recurring factors and their implications for the Sege Park district, the results of this thesis lastly concluded in a set of policy recommendations. Potential transition actors may facilitate the process on a larger scale by partaking in long-term, multi-scalar networks for urban transitions, and on a smaller scale by creating and fostering arenas and policies promoting reflexivity in a city. Furthermore, a continued exploration of pathways and strategies towards a long-term sustainability vision shared by project actors, as well as ways to secure continuous funding for projects is encouraged. A slight shift from mainly relying on technology to solve sustainability issues, towards and integrated socio-technical systems model may be observed in the on-going project. Future challenges to take on may involve gentrification processes, insecure funding, institutional reflexivity and syncing legislation with the process towards sustainability transitions