Social sustainability forms a strong part of the concept "Vallastaden", a new city district in Linköping, Sweden. Vallastaden has the political aim to be a role model for future urban development, residential areas and housing.
In this explorative study we provide deeper understanding of how socio-material practices (sayings and doings) of social sustainability related to home are enacted in the public and semi-public spaces. This is done by exploring the matters of concern (Latour 2005) that was built into the city district. The version of social sustainability enacted in Vallastaden relocate some of the conventional functions of the home to collective spaces and thus distributes the concept of the home. The ontological politics (Mol 2002) of Vallastaden enact a distributed home and a resident with particular preferences and identities. A critical perspective on the consequences of distributing the private sphere of the home will show how some identities are allowed to shape the built environment while other identities are made invisible. The research questions are: What is made into matters of concern of social sustainability enacted in Vallastaden? How is the ontological politics enacted through distribution of the home in Vallastaden? How can social sustainability be informed and developed by actor-network theory and critical intersectionality perspectives?
The study will be conducted as a case study, employing complementing methods in order to reach the aim.
Project: When the home is moving out - ontological politics in the enactment of sustainability in the city district of the future. The project is funded by the Formas.
Project duration: 2018 – 2020
