“You’ll never completely escape disturbances when it comes to construction projects in cities. But we want to minimise their impact,” says Anna Fredriksson, professor in construction logistics at Linköping University, LiU, who has led the work on the anthology Den störningsfria staden: En antologi om bygglogistik, stads- och trafikplanering.
In the book, researchers from LiU, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) and RISE, describe the experience gained from the research projects Disturbance-free city and Disturbance-free city 2.0. The projects have investigated disturbances related to urban construction – a problem that is expected to increase in the coming years – and how they can be solved.
The increase in disturbances is mainly due to increasing urbanisation in Sweden and other parts of the world that requires the construction of houses and greater investment in infrastructure such as roads, water and sewage systems in cities. However, according to the researchers, there are often major shortcomings in the coordination of construction projects.
“No one has an overview of all the ongoing projects in a city. Each project is instead a small island, and the construction companies do the best they can based on the small island. The problem arises when you have a lot of islands next to each other with many different construction companies,” says Anna Fredriksson.
Split an entire city
She thinks that this often leads to many parallel shutdowns that can sometimes split an entire city. One example that Anna Fredriksson highlights is the construction of the West Link railway connection under the centre of Gothenburg. The researchers call it the “planning gap” where accessibility for the city’s residents falls between the cracks due to unclear responsibilities, deficiencies in organisation and an overly optimistic schedule. This leads to ad hoc solutions by the individual construction companies that do not look at the whole picture.
“Take a mega project like East Link that will run for a long time. There, all the actors have a desire to have a functioning city while at the same time having effective progress in their project. There will be a number of trade-offs between how many shutdowns the project can make and accessibility,” says Anna Fredriksson.
In East Link, a new railway between Järna and Linköping, several actors will be involved in new station areas in locations including Linköping, Norrköping and Nyköping.
“The municipality needs to understand the Swedish Transport Administration’s plans and the Swedish Transport Administration must understand the municipality’s plans. But the difficult thing is that the municipality wants to take the opportunity to expand the areas around the railway station at the same time, as they want housing adjacent to the new railway,” says Anna Fredriksson.
Digital twin
To facilitate the municipality’s overview and coordination between different projects within a city, the researchers have developed advanced simulations and visualisations of construction transport. Among other things, it is possible to identify a number of “hot spots” in a city that are particularly sensitive to disturbances and require particularly careful planning.
The research group has already started the next project, Disturbance-free city 3.0, where they show how the 3D-printed digital twin of Norrköping can be used to plan traffic during construction periods. This can be useful both for citizens who want to know how to navigate their way around in everyday life and for the municipality’s professional planners who need to have an overview.
“Communication is a central part in being able to relay information on, for example, traffic diversions in a good way. But if you don’t have anything meaningful to relay, it doesn’t matter how well you say it,” says Anna Fredriksson.
The research projects have been carried out in collaboration with the municipalities of Norrköping and Linköping.
Book: Den störningsfria staden: En antologi om bygglogistik, stads- och trafikplanering, Editors: Anna Fredriksson, Linnea Eriksson, Niklas Rönnberg, Linköping University Electronic Press, 2025. DOI: 10.3384/9789181180954. ISBN 978-91-8118-094- 7 (print), ISBN 978-91-8118-095-4 (PDF).
