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Roger Hildingsson, photo.

Roger Hildingsson

Researcher

Roger Hildingsson, photo.

Planning for 1000 Years : The Råängen Experiment

Author

  • Peter Pelzer
  • Roger Hildingsson
  • Alice Herrström
  • Johannes Stripple

Summary, in English

While traditional forms of urban planning are oriented towards the future, the recent turn towards experimental and challenge-led urban developments is characterized by an overarching presentism. We explore in this article how an experimental approach to urban planning can consider the long-term through setting-up ‘conversations with a future situation.’ In doing so, we draw on a unique experiment: Råängen, a piece of farmland in Lund (Sweden) owned by the Cathedral. The plot is part of Brunnshög, a large urban development program envisioned to accommodate homes, workspaces, and world-class research centers in the coming decades. We trace how Lund Cathedral became an unusual developer involved in ‘planning for thousand years,’ deployed a set of art commissions to allow reflections about values, belief, time, faith, and became committed to play a central role in the development process. The art interventions staged conversations with involved actors as well as publics geographically and temporally far away. The Råängen case illustrates how long-term futures can be fruitfully brought to the present through multiple means of imagination. A key insight for urban planning is how techniques of financial discounting and municipal zoning plans could be complemented with trust in reflective conversations in which questions are prioritized over answers.

Department/s

  • Department of Political Science
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2021-03-26

Language

English

Pages

249-262

Publication/Series

Urban Planning

Volume

6

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Cogitatio

Topic

  • Architecture
  • Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified

Keywords

  • art
  • deep-time organizations
  • experimentation
  • long-term planning
  • Sweden

Status

Published

Project

  • Climate Imaginaries: Narrating socio-cultural transitions to a post-fossil society
  • Narrating Climate Futures

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2183-7635