“They had already sold”: Uncovering relations among the local state, the market and the public in the case of municipal housing privatization in Rosengård, Sweden

Abstract

This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted relations with the public through an in-depth qualitative case study of municipal housing privatization and urban renewal in one of the heartlands of the Swedish welfare state project, Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on the political-economic literature, I argue that housing privatization is entangled with complex interrelations among the (municipal) local state, the market, and the public and that an exploration of these relations reveals contemporary features of the local state. Hence, this investigation highlights the local state's motivation for privatization, the remaking of a market in a place where the market is believed to have failed, and the powers the local state retains. Additionally, the paper elucidates how the function of public assets changes due to privatization and considers tenants’ and residents’ worries, criticism, and concerns about municipal interventions. Subsequently, by grounding these findings in the historical function of municipalities in Sweden, the study contributes new knowledge on the local state in a deepened neoliberalized and financialized urban landscape.

Spatial Theory in Planning Practice? On the Concepts of Space that Made Urban Design a Planning Solution for Segregation in Malmö, Sweden

“…So, how were planners to craft a strategic vision for this post-industrial regeneration project to address segregation without also undermining the political consensus around a neoliberal strategy prioritising high-end urban developments as the means to compete for the desirable residents? One strategy entailed using privatisations and place-branding to present Malm€ o as an investment opportunity and thus attract potential new residents (Gustafsson 2022). Meanwhile, in Sorgenfri, the development process became increasingly shaped by this urgent political priority to signal that planning had solutions to segregation-but without challenging the underlying racialisation of the region's spatial injustices and how neoliberalised planning's priorities of attractive space actively reproduced these conditions.…”