Assessing the Impact of Planning Practice on Mitigating Spatial Segregation : Study of Three Medium-sized Cities of Sweden

The increasing diversity of people in the cities due to global processes like immigration makes the cities multicultural. However, multicultural cities become prone to conflicts as the citizens of different cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds are put together in the city. Citizens are divided into neighborhoods where some neighborhoods become concentrated with low-income citizens, mostly with immigrant backgrounds. Planners have been working with the policies like social mix housing policy to mitigate segregation. However, with time the conflicts and tension remain visible among the citizens and neighborhoods. Research has been focusing on the larger metropolitan areas of Sweden, so this study focuses on medium-sized cities, Linköping, Motala and Norrköping, through analysis of planning documents and interviews with the planners to assess the impact of planning practice in mitigating segregation. The results show that planners ignore the ethnic differences between citizens in their planning practice and base their planning on avoiding conflicts. While in the process, ethnically diverse groups are excluded and, in some cases, stigmatized