Acceso usuarios
Ståle Holgersen
It is common knowledge that crisis also signifies opportunity and opens spaces forchange. When responding to the current economic crisis, is urban planning seizing thisopportunity? This article investigates the case of the Swedish city of Malmö and exploresits responses to the crisis by looking dialectically at the crisis, municipal planning policyand real-estate capital. In this article, the local state and urban planning are regardedas social relations, with the aim of going beyond traditional formulations that opposemarket (neoliberal) and state intervention (Keynesianism) as the main focus for crisismanagement. Against this background, the article shows that the 2008 crisis was met inMalmö by an active municipality that confirmed the existing visions and tendencies,rather than exploiting the crisis as a moment for changes and transformation. The articleseeks to explain this by looking at the social relations that have constituted the urbanpolicies in Malmö for the past two decades.
