Uploaded on 2016-08-24 by Alex Andersson

Liveable Cities Exercise Alex Andersson 24/08/2016 PICTURE NOT TAKEN BY ME. Question 1: List the five most liveable cities based on your experience and judgement. Copenhagen, Berlin, Toronto, Vienna, Stockholm Question 2: Describe five characteristics that make a city liveable according to you. Safety, financial opportunities, housing/infrastructure, social sustainability and green sustainability. Question 3: Describe the status of your own city in in terms of the five characteristics from #2. Propose how your city should/could be transformed in relation to above characteristics. In terms of safety, my current city of Gothenburg could most certainly improve. Safety is however a reflection measure, it is a measure that reflects socioeconomic, cultural and other divides in society. To come to terms with those issues a plethora of issues need to be tackled, some of which are doable on the local policy level and some of them consequences of globalization, migration and state policy. Primarily I believe good work opportunities, access to affordable housing, efforts to decrease segregation in schools and very early efforts to make sure kids stay on a healthy path is the overall issues that needs to be addressed. Furthermore, specific policies are needed in terms of migrants, early access to education, quicker asylum processes and societal introduction are needed. Even compared to say Spain or France Sweden sticks out a lot, and guidance is needed for newcomers. For financial opportunities, on a policy level more resources should be allocated to infrastructure, housing and research. Secondly, I am firm believer that in this day and age a fairly large city as Gothenburg (second largest in Sweden, abysmally small in the world context) already excercies a strong pull-factor for people, but to be truly successful and maintain a strong pull-factor on entrepreneurs, companies, investors and creative people who create financial opportunities, the city needs to make sure my other four characteristics are improved. Housing (infrastructure) is in short supply in most urbanized regions of the world with a positive influx of people. I believe it is important to realise that people have different needs and expectations throughout life. The average young person, whether in school or work usually only needs a small flat of modest quality, price and location is key. For an old retired couple, maybe the house is getting a bit big and so on. As such we need to manipulate construction to give a helping hand to the market to produce what is requested. The private market will meet demand, but since space is limited, only parts of the demand will be met. Housing has always been an imperfect market, without some sort of state intervention and policies we will end up with large groups that have very little opportunities to find housing. I strongly believe that making sure housing is in place is just as important as making sure infrastructure is in place. Solid public transportation, bikes and smart uses of roads is incredibly important. Gothenburg is in this sense miles behind other cities, public transport stops running very early. Overall car is, even though that the car situation is quite bad as well, sometimes 4-5 times quicker than a bus or tram. This is a severe problem, much is in the pipeline to solve this luckily. I advocate more forward-thinking. We are addressing the problems of today with solutions that come into play tomorrow. We are planning on how to sort out todays problems, but that is not enough; we need to plan just as much for tomorrows issues. Social sustainability I think the city is on a decent path with this, if we can improve the three first categories and corresponding solutions I believe we will be on a good path. Furthermore small simply solution can be used to improve social sustainability, or socioecological indicators such as using the waterfront more actively. Maintaining and improving green areas. Green sustainability presents a variety of problems. I think decreasing dependency on cars should be the #1 priority. Improving bike-lanes, building out/strengthening public transport as well as improving availability and increasing tolls would be a good start. Furthermore, efficiency improvements on residential buildings in terms of energy use can certainly be made. Overall on a relative scale Gothenburg is doing well, but a lot more can be done. Recycleing can be improved, re-use of old goods can also be furthered.