On January 31st 2019, Karl Samuelsson PhD student in Geospatial information science at the Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development presents his Licentiate with the title Spatial analyses of people’s experiences in urban landscapes at the University of Gävle.
Limiting cities’ negative impact for global sustainability suggests compact city development. However, extensive and accessible urban nature is important for urban dwellers’ wellbeing. Aligning efforts to make cities locally and globally sustainable means resolving this conflict.
This thesis applies spatial analysis of urban dwellers’ experiences, as these are important wellbeing indicators, looking specifically at Stockholm, Sweden. It investigates how accessibility to various environment features are related to positive and negative experiences. It further applies resilience principles to investigate what experiences exist together in neighbourhoods, and how these compositions of experiences are related to urban spatial properties.
The urban environment have considerable influence on people’s experiences. Some common indicators in urban planning display weak relationships with experiential outcome, while less common ones have larger effects. Neighbourhood compositions of experiences display consistent patterns, both spatially and with respect to resilience principles. Many neighbourhoods harbour diverse positive experiences, while a few are dominated by negative experiences.
The results suggest that human-environment relations should be given more consideration in urban planning, as this provides opportunities to improve urban dweller’s experiences, and positively influence their wellbeing. In urban planning practice, resilience principles can be heuristics for an urban development that does not compromise people’s experiences.
Date: January 31st, 2019
Time: 13:00
Location: Krusenstjernasalen (in the library; 23:213), University of Gävle
Opponent: Professor Jon Norberg, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
Examiner: Associate Professor Meta Berghauser Pont, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology
Stand-in: Docent Jesper Paasch, University of Gävle
Supervisors: Stephan Barthel and Anders Brandt, University of Gävle
