No abstract

In order for town centres to manage increased competition in retailing, cooperation between stakeholders in a strategic alliance has become more important. Typical stakeholders in such a strategic alliance are retailers, local authorities, and property owners. The importance of retailers and local authorities is well researched. However, the property owners' importance is not. The aim of this article is to uncover the perceived importance of property owners in a strategic alliance. This is a case study of a medium-sized town in which semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders were conducted. In the chosen town there is a town centre management alliance at work. The case studied shows a fragmented property owner market with no dominant property owner. Our study shows that the perception of the role of the property owner is crucial for town centre development. However, many property owners do not recognise their own significance for the town centre development. The main reasons for this opinion are that they do not consider themselves to have enough resources or the capability to influence the town development.

No abstract

Long-term trends in the spatial distribution of the population of Sweden are analyzed in this study. "Two geographical levels, the national and the local, are analysed in a long term perspective, [from] 1750 until 1990. The measure of concentration used is the Hoover-index on [the] county level. Some major determinants affecting population distribution are stressed; demographic components, economic geographic conditions, socio-economic structure, attitudes and population policy. During the last few decades the traditional trend of population has been broken and one finding is that concentration and dispersion is going on simultaneously on the national and the local level."