Beaktande av social hållbarhet : En fallstudie inom svensk järnvägsplanering

As social sustainability has lacked recognition and consideration within physical planning since the establishment of the sustainability definition, this thesis seeks to investigate its role within a railway infrastructure’s physical planning process and project management. The study evaluates the specific case of the East Link, section Södertälje-Trosa, because it is a current project that has been ongoing for a long period of time. The thesis further seeks to investigate how the planning actors connected to the case study project have recognised the role of social sustainability and what influences they experience have affected the level of social sustainability within the project. The theory used to evaluate the research questions includes a definition for sustainability and presents which social sustainability aspects have been used for the investigation: distributive justice, the citizen perspective, and power. To be able to evaluate the project management of the East Link Södertälje-Trosa, theory regarding project management and communication is also presented. The case study has been focused on the analysis of publicly available documents for the project, which are also complemented by semi-structured interviews with planning actors of different sectors. The empirical analysis, where the case study results are connected to the theoretical basis, concludes that the East Link Södertälje-Trosa project has lacked both consideration and recognised ambition for social sustainability, even though the Swedish Transport Administration has expressed a future aim for the concept. The reason as to why social sustainability has lacked prioritisation is due to multiple factors; the timing of the project initiation, size of the project and project management, as well as lack of consideration and recognition for social sustainabilityaspects within the citizen perspective and the utilitarian philosophy behind the project. While the Swedish Transport Administration is largely responsible for the ambition of social sustainability within the project, the level of social sustainability is also influenced by the power of the discourse, where it has not gained enough recognition as important for physical planning and because of this, there are no legal requirements for its focus. The future of social sustainability and its recognition is further discussed in relation to the Swedish Transport Administration’s future ambition of social sustainability, the practice of social impact assessments and inclusion of social sustainability sectors within projects. Finally, a proposition is made regarding social-ecological sustainability, where social sustainability can gain equal recognition to ecological, as they are interdependent and of equal importance in physical planning