Fritidshuset som planeringsdilemma

The thesis The Vacation House as a Planning Dilemma deals with how the processes that generate meaning in space proceed in parallel both in everyday life and in the planning realm. Multiple dwelling, or having two homes, can be seen as a dilemma—one in which the planning system’s attempts to conquer an unruly reality conflicts with the ways people live. The vacation house phenomenon is not a neutral concept, but rather influences and is influenced by a variety of contexts. This ambiguity is problematic for practitioners of spatial planning, a field that strives for unequivocal concepts. My interest is primarily directed at the relationship between the intentions in Swedish legislation and their practical application in planning. These legislative and planning spheres are also influenced by what actually happens in a physical space and by the conceptions we have of the life to be lived in it. The purpose of the thesis is to create the conditions for a discussion of how a planning dilemma like multiple dwelling can be understood based on how the various actors in a space create meaning and on the internal competition among them for the preferential right of interpretation over concepts. The thesis actualizes several scientific issues for us to address: How is the concept of multiple dwelling contextualized in material space? How does the housing market portray conceptions of vacation living? How do municipal planners view having two homes? How do environmental and urban planning laws view multiple dwelling? I use Henri Lefebvre’s three-part dialectic of spatial theory in this thesis as a tool for general classification, to analyze spatial processes over time, and to clarify the relationships between the different elements of a space and different actors’ actions in a space. The focus of my analysis of the field of planning is the various kinds of representations made by experts. My analysis of such constructions is conducted at the level of discourse. In order to understand how such spatial representations are constructed and how they compete with one another, I have taken a discourse analytical perspective inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The results of my thesis have shown that problem solutions lead to different planning constructions depending on the underlying conception of the vacation house, whether the vacation house is conceived as the Other Home or the secondary home. My analyses have shown that modernism’s striving for systematization and functional separation doesn’t work, at least as applied to housing. We must question the premise of functionally distinguishing between housing forms as a means to conserving natural resources.fritidshus, planeringsdilemma, fysisk planering, lagstiftning, dubbel bosättning, miljöbalken, annonser, fastighetsmäklare, Lefebvre, Laclau, Mouff