RESEARCH PROJECT

The Welfare Landscape Reassembled: Policies for sustainable outdoor recreation in times of urban densification

Updated: November 2025

Project overview

Project start: January 2017 Ending: December 2023
Project manager: Mattias Qvistrom
Funded by: Formas

Participants

Research groups:

More related research

Short summary

The project studies the heritage of the welfare state, the welfare landscape, and how it’s values can be secured in densification projects.

Densification is at the top of the agenda when today’s planners discuss sustainable development. In this debate, criticism of postwar planning is pervasive. Instead, many now highlight the early 20th-century stone city as an ideal. But with the criticism of postwar modernist planning, something is lost: the landscape of welfare.

During Sweden’s postwar period, public actors invested substantial resources in creating outdoor environments founded on ideas of social justice, equality, and health. Today, many of the landscapes of welfare planning are under threat — both for economic reasons and due to a lack of understanding of these places’ purpose, function, and actual use.

The project highlights how landscape planning between the 1960s and 1980s was actively used to create welfare and well-being, and thus formed a central piece in the construction of the welfare society. We wanted to return to the planning of the welfare landscapes, to point out how these landscapes have been transformed and renegotiated, and to study how they are used and understood in today’s densification projects. In doing so, we aimed to draw attention to the welfare state’s ambitious landscape planning and to show how its specific qualities can serve as a resource for contemporary urban life.

At the center of the project were the various strategies of welfare planning for creating and maintaining green spaces and other places for an active outdoor life.

In the project also participated:

  • Environmental Sociologist Mia Ågren who's PhD project deals with the contemporary effects of welfare planning on social justice;
  • Landscape Architect Therese Andersson (at SLU until 2019) who studied the densification of post-war areas;
  • Historian Johan Pries (at SLU until 2021) who's Postdoc project analysed how remnants of the welfare planning still remains today;
  • Research assistant Hanna Peinert (at SLU until 2021). 

Peer-reviewed International articles and book chapters

Engström, A. (2023). Planning for an urban recreational landscape: tracing the geographies of outdoor recreation in the compact city. Diss. Uppsala:Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet.

Engström, A.  (Accepterad med minor revisions). Scrutinizing the plan-ability of outdoor recreation in the Swedish compact city: continuing and discontiuing modernist planning legacies. Planning theory and practice.

Ferreira da Silva, S. (Accepterad med minor revisions). Performances of Power: Reframing Brasilia’s Green Belt as a Modernist Border. Planning perspectives.

Jansson, M., Herbert, E., Zalar, A. & Johansson, M. (2022). Child-friendly environments – what, who and by whom? Sustainability 14(8), 4852; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084852

Jansson, M. & Schneider, J. (2023). The welfare landscape and densification – Residents’ relations to local outdoor environments affected by infill development. Land 12(11), 10.3390/land12112021

Pries, J. (2020). Neoliberal Urban Planning Through Social Government: Notes on the Demographic Re‐engineering of Malmö, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 44, 248-265.

Pries, J. (2022). A technocratic road to spatial justice? The standard as planning knowledge and the making of postwar Sweden’s welfare landscapes. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 104(3): 285-305.

Pries, J. & Qviström, M. (2021). The patchwork planning of a welfare landscape: reappraising the role of leisure planning in the Swedish welfare state. Planning perspectives 36(5): 923-948.

Pries, J. & Qviström, M. (2022). Revisiting the green geographies of welfare planning: an introduction." Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 104(3): 185-191.

Qviström, M. (2022). Finding the pulse of the welfare landscape: reframing green space provision in modernist planning, Geografiska annaler Series B, 104(3): 269-284, DOI: 10.1080/04353684.2022.2040376

Qviström, M. & Jansson, M. (2022). Tracing discourses: learning from the past for future landscape architecture. I: Bruns, D. & Hennecke, S (red.), The Routledge Handbook of Landscape Architecture Education. Routledge.

Zalar, A. & Pries, J. (2022). Unmapping green space: Discursive dispossession of the right to green space by a compact city planning epistemology. City 26(1): 51-73.

Fact sheets, articles in professional journals, and popular science articles

Engström, A. (2019). Folkhemmets idrottsrörelse. Rörelserik stadsutveckling: Finns det plats för idrott och aktivitet när tätorten blir tätare?. Tankesmedjan Movium, Riksidrottsförbundet, 6–13.

Jansson, M. (2023). Vad händer med barnvänligheten när välfärdens landskap förtätas? Tidskriften Landskap 5/2023: 26-28.

Jansson, M., Schneider, J. & Herbert, E. (2023). Förtätning av välfärdslandskap: en enkätstudie om upplevelse och användning av bostadsnära utemiljöer. LTV rapportserie 2023:1. https://publications.slu.se/?file=publ/show&id=119973

Jansson, M., Leposa, N. & Qviström, M. (2023). Välfärdens landskap – ett arv som främjar rekreation. LTV-fakultetens faktablad 2023:11

Jansson, M. Schneider, J. & Sunding, A. (2023). Förtätningens effekter för boende, Gröna fakta i Tidningen Utemiljö 2/2023

Pries J. (2023). Planning in and against the urban commons. City, 27(5-6): 1070-1074, DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2023.2260197

Pries, J. (2022). Fields notes on design activism: density. Places Journal 

Pries, J. (2021). Scener ur Lisa Bauers vardagsvärld. KRITIK: Tidskrift för arkitektur, 21.

Pries, J. (2019). Rapport från förtätad förort: Fältanteckningar från Norra Fäladen, Lund. KRITIK: Tidskrift för arkitektur.

Pries, J. (2019). Recension: "PUSH", Fredrik Gertten, 2019. KRITIK: Tidskrift för arkitektur.

Pries, J. (2019). Var är husockupationerna i den nyliberala staden? I: Ockuperat! Svenska husockupationer 1968-2018. Polanska & Wåg, Verbal förlag.

Qviström, M. (2021). Recreative places in a remotely urban context. I: Nilsson, K., Weber, R. & Rohrer, L (red.) Green visions: Greenspace Planning and Design in Nordic Cities. Arvinius + Orfeus.

Qviström, M. (Under utgivning). Välfärdens landskap. I: Den byggda formens betydelse. Boverket.

Qviström, M. & Pries, J. (2020). Välfärdens landskap i förtätningens tidevarv. Tidningen Utemiljö, Gröna fakta nr 5 2020.

Richold, J. & Qviström, M. (2023). Focusing on the Fuzzy: An Imaginative Tool for Assessing Urban Recreative Planning. LTV Faculty Factsheet, 2023:12.

Yigit Tutan, B. & Ågren, M. (2022). Segregation and Landscape Injustice in the Shadows of White Planning and Green Exceptionalism in Sweden. Urban matters: https://urbanmattersjournal.com

Blogs (https://valfardenslandskap.com/)

Engström, A. (2022). The precedence of the fit body: A reflection on fitness as new norm in recreational planning.

Engström, A. (2023). Kaniner, lera och löpspår: möten på en idrottsplats.

Engström, A. & Pries, J. (2021). Landskapsmåleri i gränslandet.

Jansson, M. (2022a). Mångfunktionalitetens gräns.

Jansson, M. (2022b). Har vi tappat vår svenska lekparkshistoria?

Jansson, M. (2023). Uppläxningar i välfärdens landskap.

Leposa, N. (2021). Man kan inte bara bo, man måste också leva.

Leposa, N. (2022a). The Nordic Welfare Landscapes.

Leposa, N. (2022b). Urbanism in the 1970s and today: From luxurious green space to luxurious price and lack of green space.

Pries, J. (2021a). Fältanteckningar om förtätningens konsekvenser för barnens bilfria stadslandskap.

Pries. (2021b). Where to now for the welfare landscapes?

Pries, J. & Zalar, A. (2022). Unmapping green space: notes on the densification of Rosengård.

Qviström, M. (2021a). Landskapet möjliggör välfärden

Qviström, M. (2021b). Välfärdens landskap engagerar

Qviström, M. (2022a). Urban forests for a welfare society: running and the forest ideal in Swedish recreational planning.

Qviström, M. (2022b). Stadens ojämlika geografi.

Qviström, M. (2022c). Skydda asfalten!

Qviström, M. (2022d). Den programmerade välfärden.

Qviström, M. (2022e). Välfärdens vardagsnatur.

Qviström, M. (2022f). Välfärdens landskap på export: fältstudier i Slovenien.

Qviström, M. (2023). Spelet om Välfärdens landskap.

Schneider, J. (2023). ”De kanske säger förlåt om 50 år”.

Master's theses produced within the project

Barna, P. & Ackar, V. (2020). Förtätning - olägenhet eller tillgång för städernas barn? Masterarbete. Alnarp: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet.

Brusewitz, E. (2016). Att planera för social hållbarhet: en studie av strategier och hur de kan tillämpas. Masterarbete. Alnarp: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet.

Beckman, D. & Dahlman, P. (2022). Grönskans plats vid förtätning: rumslig analys av miljonprogramsområden samt gestaltning med bevarad grönska. Uppsala: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet.

Stigertsson, A. & Palmqvist, R. (2020). Samhällsplanering – ett barn av sin tid?: modernismens och nyliberalismens påverkan på barns utemiljöer i staden. Alnarp: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet.

Stryjan, N. (2020). Planering för fysisk aktivitet: en analys av Hallonbergen 1967-2020. Uppsala: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet.

VARDAGSNATUR Nr. 20 i Poddserien Arwidsson Talks (Mattias Qviström) 

 

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