Kjell Nilsson - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Kjell Nilsson

The Nordic countries are known for their green cities, full of accessible green and blue spaces a... more The Nordic countries are known for their green cities, full of accessible green and blue spaces and surrounded by agricultural land, vast forests and lakes. These green and blue non-built up environments have the potential to offer a wide variety of supporting, regulating, provisioning ecosystem services and preserving cultural heritage. More precisely, Green Infrastructure is a multifunctional network that facilitates the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, promotes human health and wellbeing, and enhances biodiversity. Strategic planning of land and water areas is necessary to ensure a coherent Green Infrastructure beyond the urban/rural divides. How do we achieve that? GREEN INFRASTRUCTUREstrategic land use for well-being, business and biodiversity POLICY BRIEF APRIL 2019 #05 NORDREGIO POLICY BRIEF 2 Nordregio has studied policy approaches and actions that facilitate Green Infrastructure (GI) in the ESPON countries as part of the GRETA project (www.espon.eu/green-infrastructure). The main findings for the Nordic countries are summarised in this Policy Brief. The aim is to support decision-making processes and political action towards a GI approach. We make recommendations on how to utilise the multifunctional concept of GI in planning processes and outline the kind of added value it could bring to the Nordic countries.

A common challenge for Northern communities is how to retain a local benefit from resource-based ... more A common challenge for Northern communities is how to retain a local benefit from resource-based industries. This study assesses the process of developing a local smart specialisation strategy in two municipalities, Storumanand Sodankylä, both located in the Northern Periphery. The assessment framework applied is based on the concept of 'strategic dimensions'(Healey, 2009), along with a qualitative set of process and outcome criteria(Innes and Booher, 1999). Our assessment of the strategic process indicates that all dimensions required for strategic planning were represented within it, but that they were mostly responsive rather than transformative in character. When comparing results from process criteria and outcome criteria, the process criteria score significantly higher. The strategic process engaged social networks and involved local stakeholders in discussion and joint prioritisation. According to the participating stakeholders, the local smart specialisation strategi...

Nordisk välfärdsforskning | Nordic Welfare Research, 2020

By synthesising individual components of a complex system, composite indicators are ideally used ... more By synthesising individual components of a complex system, composite indicators are ideally used to compare regional performance and to initiate public debates. The Regional Potential Index (RPI) provides an index value for each administrative region of the Nordic Region to enable cross-regional comparison of development potential and to illustrate the regional balance. Data from nine selected socioeconomic indicators concerning demography, the labour force and the economy was used to construct the RPI. This article hence aims to show how regional development potential looks in different parts of the Nordic Region and how the regional balance has developed over recent years. The results demonstrate a continued strong position of urban regions, while those administrative regions that have improved their ranking are mainly found in the rural parts of the Nordic Region. The large majority of the analysed regions increased their score between 2017 and 2019, which indicates diminishing differences between these administrative regions in terms of development potential and a positive development regarding the cohesion policy. Yet, it is important to note that the geography of an administrative region and the lack of reliable data on cross-border flows, qualitative dimensions, and carbon dioxide emissions influence the results in the ranking.

Landscapes change continually. In the 20th century, much of the Swedish landscape has been marked... more Landscapes change continually. In the 20th century, much of the Swedish landscape has been marked by technical and industrial projects such as power stations, road construction, industrial plants, quarries, and landfills. Environmental awareness and public opinion have profoundly influenced the way industrial facilities are designed and sited in the landscape. Roughly speaking, this development can be divided into four periods. During two of these periods, 1900-29 and 1950-69, the ideal was to assert the facilities' industrial character; In the other two periods, 1930-49 and 1970-95, the goal was to hide those facilities, subordinating them to the natural landscape.

Journal of Rural Studies, 2020

Rural areas in the Nordic countries often face challenges such as demographic change and the clos... more Rural areas in the Nordic countries often face challenges such as demographic change and the closure of public services. To address this situation, some rural communities have developed solutions which can be characterised as social innovation. This paper analyses 18 such community-driven social innovation projects across the Nordic countries and seeks to examine the importance of different actors in the initiation and implementation phases of such projects. Based on qualitative analysis, focusing on the different stages of community-driven social innovation, the paper assesses the importance of different actors in developing each of the projects. The analysis demonstrates the relative importance of community members, civil society organisations, the local public sector, the private sector, and regional and national authorities, in terms of their respective involvements in the initiation and implementation processes for these projects. The key findings from this paper emphasise the differences between initiation and implementation for each of these community-driven social innovation projects. The initiation phase is highly dependent upon community members, civil society organisations and the local public sector, whereas it is primarily civil society organisations which dominate the implementation phase. Central to initiating and sustaining community-driven projects is the capacity of local actors to develop ideas, to find resources and to manage decision-making.

The Nordic model is about the egalitarian values that has guided it, the universalism in the inst... more The Nordic model is about the egalitarian values that has guided it, the universalism in the institutions that underpins it and the democratic as well as research based 'modernization' process that continues to reform it. Starting with the oil-crisis in the 1970s, the model has been under a sort of permanent stress test coming from neoliberalism, globalization, Europeanisation, ageing populations, migration, climate change, and the Great Recession. The model is further challenged by emerging regional divisions of welfare. I argue that that the social investment approach provides an interesting starting point for addressing immediate concerns and long-term challenges and this also is relevant from a regional perspective. It is about combining economic perspectives with social objectives with the aim to promote a socially sustainable development.

Land, 2019

Interest in green infrastructure (GI) has grown in research, policy and planning in recent decade... more Interest in green infrastructure (GI) has grown in research, policy and planning in recent decades. The central idea behind GI is the understanding of the physical non-built-up environment as an infrastructure capable of delivering a wide variety of benefits to society, including the ability to preserve biodiversity; to provide food, feed, fuel and fibre; to adapt to and mitigate climate change and to contribute to enhanced human health and quality of life. The European Union (EU) has had a GI strategy since 2013, and member states are involved in several strategic and applied GI initiatives and projects. The aim of this study is to explore if and how the European strategy has been implemented. The study adds to the body of knowledge of current GI policies and measures in Europe via an online survey and insights into previous research. The survey reveals that GI is integrated into one or more policy sectors in all 32 countries covered. In 11 of the 32 countries, GI-specific policies...

Revue Forestière Française, 2018

Dans la société moderne actuelle, les maladies liées au mode de vie jouent un rôle de plus en plu... more Dans la société moderne actuelle, les maladies liées au mode de vie jouent un rôle de plus en plus important parmi les causes de mauvaise santé. Parmi les facteurs qui contribuent le plus à ces maladies, on cite volontiers la sédentarité croissante et un niveau de stress accru aussi bien dans le cadrep rofessionnel que dans la vie privée (Nilsson et al.,2 011a). Il s'agit là de graves problèmes sociétaux qui nécessitentd en ouvelles solutionse mpruntantd 'autres voies pour la prévention desm aladies et la promotion de la santé :l em anque d'activité physique combiné au stress sont àl 'origine d'une incidence croissante de maladies pour lesquelles l'approche médicamenteuse classique ne contribue qu'à atténuer les symptômes sans s'attaquer aux causes des pathologies ni àl ad égradation de la qualité de vie (ibid.).

white paper on nordic sustainable cities developed by nordregio 2 Nordic Cooperation is one of th... more white paper on nordic sustainable cities developed by nordregio 2 Nordic Cooperation is one of the world's most extensive forms of regional collaboration, involving

Future Cities and Environment, 2016

Urban growth management has become a common term to circumscribe strategies and tools to regulate... more Urban growth management has become a common term to circumscribe strategies and tools to regulate urban land use in metropolitan areas. It is particularly used to counteract negative impacts of urban sprawl but also to frame future urban development. We discuss recent challenges of urban growth in 6 European and 2 US American city-regions. The paper compares the urban development focusing on a quantification of drivers and effects of urban growth and a qualitative analysis of the applied urban growth management tools. We build our analysis on findings from the EU-FP6 project PLUREL. The cities have different success in dealing with urban growth pressure-some can accommodate most growth in existing urban areas and densify, others expand or sprawl. Urban growth management is no guarantee to contain urban growth, but the case studies offer some innovative ways how to deal with particular challenges.

Tidningen Utemiljoe, 2013

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