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Contradictions of Neoliberal Planning pp 21–42Cite as

Normalising Neoliberal Planning: The Case of Malmö, Sweden

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Part of the book series: GeoJournal Library ((GEJL,volume 102))

Abstract

This chapter tries to demonstrate how the Urban Development Project of Hyllie in Malmö, Sweden, has normalised neoliberal planning practices that were pioneered in the first UDP in Malmö, Western Harbour, a spectacular development of housing and offices, symbolically built on former shipyard grounds in the early 2000s. Closed architectural competitions, compliance in the local press, a focus on the very construction of the project as a main motivation, the virtual absence of social matters, and the virtual absence of debate, dispute or disagreement altogether, have become ordinary elements in the planning of larger development in the city. But there is no clear break with the ‘social-democratic’ Malmö that precedes the current institutionalisation of neoliberal planning. The Hyllie project borrows heavily from the 1960s Million program’s architectural and design language, and shows a similar impatient drive to ‘build away’ the past (impoverishment, deindustrialisation), head for a similar modernist future that would erase social divides, and, this time, populate the city with cosmopolitan open-minded creative educated liberals.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    One of 2006 election slogans of the conservative People’s Party which are now part of the coalition government.

  2. 2.

    The city of Malmö, with other regional actors, sent a delegation of 17 business leaders, civil servants and politicians to MIPIM 2007, which is the largest annual real estate fair in the world.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Economic Geography, Lund University, 22362, Lund, Sweden

    Guy Baeten

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  1. Guy Baeten
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Correspondence to Guy Baeten .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. OTB Research Inst. Housing,, Urban & Mobility Studies, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    Tuna Tasan-Kok

  2. Dept. Social & Economic Geography, University of Lund, Sölvegatan 12, Lund, 223 62, Sweden

    Guy Baeten

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Baeten, G. (2012). Normalising Neoliberal Planning: The Case of Malmö, Sweden. In: Tasan-Kok, T., Baeten, G. (eds) Contradictions of Neoliberal Planning. GeoJournal Library, vol 102. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8924-3_2

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