Housing and social mix in Swedish cities

The project focuses on two main research questions:

Is it, from a counter-segregation point of view, more important to plan for housing mix in the bigger cities than in the smaller ones, and is it more important in the city center than in the periphery? We here study the relationship between the compositional structure of neighbourhoods (housing types and tenure) and its relation to the socioeconomic and ethnic composition and we study this for cities of different size.
How do compositional changes come about? We study planning initiatives launched with the aim to achieve greater housing mix in neighbourhoods and we focus in particular on two main types of interventions: a) attempts to add new housing forms in existing neighbourhoods (for instance adding rental housing in a predominantly home ownership neighbourhood or vice versa), b) tenure conversions (in particular from rental to cooperative housing).

The first sub-studies are making use of geocoded individual, longitudinal register data compiled by Statistics Sweden for the period 1990 to 2010. Most of the data comes from the population, real estate and property, and income registry. The second set of sub-studies uses a combination of registry and survey data, where the survey targets residents who have experienced neighbourhood mixing strategies.

Project start

2009

Funding

Vetenskapsrådet

Researchers

Roger Andersson, professor in geography (project manager)
Emma Holmqvist, researcher, IBF
Zara Bergsten, researcher, geography