A CITY FOR ALL: upgrading the modernist planning utopia by introducing mixture and flexibility in the context of mass-production housing development

The theme of current year studio Design As Politics made me to think of the planning processes in a wider sense, including not only the social and spatial aspect, but also the political perspective, and how it relates to influencing physical form of the city. I got interested to look into such processes more deeply, from a professional perspective, to analyze the methods, strategies and consequences of planning by such a powerful organ as a state. Is it capable to fulfill the needs and hopes of society, or is it failing its ‘responsibility’ to serve its citizens? To answer this question, I challenged myself to analyze and, especially, criticize one of the strongest welfare states in the European context – Sweden – which for long time has been an example of social democratic country, with liberal attitude to its society, and high economic performance. In the month of May 2013, there has been series of riots and other criminal actions happening in suburban areas of Stockholm, starting in the district of Husby. For many, the riots in Husby seemed to appear as an unexpected event because of Sweden’s association to the social democratic welfare state. This was the crucial point for choosing this location for my graduation work – interest in dystopia of social unrest, in the context of so thought example country of liberty, equality and social democracy. The reason for such violent events, however, shows the other side of ‘the coin’. City center of Stockholm have become thoroughly gentrified enclave for the native middle/upper-class, while its poorest suburbs are increasingly non-white (Huttman, E. D., Blauw, W., Saltman, J., (1991) ). Since the 1990s, when liberalizations in Sweden started, Swedish big cities now belong to the most segregated in Europe (according to OECD report, 2011).