Brita Hermelin

• Linköping University

This paper aims to contribute to a qualitative understanding of rescaling and its impact on planning strategies and governance relations across scales. By investigating the effects of rescaling for the old scale 'left behind'-through the case of public transport planning in Sweden-this paper illustrates how rescaled tasks continue to engage the sca...

Purpose The circular economy (CE) has been endorsed as representing a model that is able to achieve environmental protection through decreased use of raw materials, together with changing economic values and social inclusion thanks to its demand for a wide variety of skill profiles. This has motivated many policy initiatives to support the implemen...

This paper analyses local development policy by investigating how this worked during a crisis situation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic from spring 2020, with major effects on the economy. This empirical study covers local government in Sweden. The results reveal two major findings. First, that decentralized dialogues between local government and i...

This article investigates how the international wave of decentralisation of development policy, promoted through ideals of place-based policy, becomes practice through development interventions made by municipalities in Sweden. Based on an extensive empirical study across Swedish municipalities, the article contributes with knowledge about how the...

This study focuses on the formation and institutional changes of governance for regional development in three second-tier city-regions in Sweden. It explains the spatial relations of such institutional change. It integrates concepts from historical institutionalism in a spatial approach and investigates the path dependency of institutional change....

Den här rapporten handlar om förutsättningar för att organisera, planera och utveckla ändamålsenliga och hållbara kollektivtrafiksystem i Sverige. Rapporten tar sin utgångspunkt i den lagändring som gjordes 2012 som innebar att 21 nyinrättade regionala kollektivtrafikmyndigheter (RKM) tog över ansvaret för kollektivtrafiken från landets 290 kommune...

This paper departs from research illustrating that the development effects of high-speed rail (HSR) vary between cities being locations for stations and assumes that strategic planning and geographical contexts matter. It gives an overview of general planning through local authorities for a coming HSR and its station locations in four Swedish citie...

The scholarly debate about cooperation between different stakeholders in Vocational Education and Training has primarily focussed on the national level, and much less on local and regional levels. This article aims to contribute to our understanding of the conditions and mechanisms of decentralised cooperation in VET systems, through a comparative...

Inledning Sambandet mellan persontransporter och de globala utsläppen av växthusgaser är väldokumenterat (IEA, 2014; Sims et al, 2014). I Sverige bidrar transportsektorn, och här framförallt personbilstrafik, till en tredjedel av den totala mängden utsläpp av växthusgaser (Naturvårdsverket, 2017). På samma gång anses transportsektorn, och här särsk...

The aim of the article is to determine what a local Digital Agenda (DA) implies for ICT development at the local level and how such a policy can be realised in practice. The topic is discussed in relation to the EU and Swedish Digital Agendas, which have motivated the definition of a local DA for the examined Swedish municipality of Linköping. An a...

Strategic spatial planning has been suggested as a means for environmental sustainability. However, there are significant challenges with operationalising and integrating policy-driven strategic spatial planning within the standardised and process-oriented management systems of local authorities. This aspect has motivated discussions on how impleme...

The 1992 Rio Earth Summit represented a crucial point in time at which the key role of the local level for sustainable development was importantly endorsed. However, since this UN summit, ideals about how to design local sustainable development have changed significantly. This paper investigates how local policy in ten second-rank cities in Sweden...

Social innovation has gained an important position in policy agendas at the international, national, and local levels. The article investigates two empirical cases of local social entrepreneurship initiatives in two comparable small towns located in Norway and in Sweden. These projects endeavour for social integration of young persons into educatio...

In this article, we analyse a recent industry-driven initiative in Sweden for the organisation and operation of Vocational Education and Training. In the context of a statist and school-based system for VET, this is an initiative which seems to be an example of an anomaly in the present system. The initiative is called the Technical College scheme...

This study explores industry–education collaboration on vocational education and training (VET) in upper secondary schools in Sweden and Norway, with particular attention to the initiatives, organisation and operational management, and aspects of robustness and lock-in effects. The case studies include two upper secondary schools situated in manufa...

In recent decades, there has been growing interest in renowned gourmet restaurants, and increased awareness about how food is prepared, presented and served. A small and select group of chefs have thereby gained prestigious positions and high-profile images as restaurateurs. Most of these restaurateurs are men. The research question this article se...

This article is an explorative investigation of a sample of advanced producer service (APS) companies located in Stockholm (the capital and main urban centre of Sweden). The discussion is centred on aspects of work practice and how this is conditioned by space-time constraints. These space-time constraints refer to coupling, authority and capabilit...

In drawing this book to a conclusion, we do not intend to claim that all of the preceding contributions share the same theoretical perspective, definition of service industry activity or are approaching their various topics regarding greening the economy with equivalent research questions. It should also be obvious to the reader in reaching the end...

The debate about the emergence of an environmentally sustainable global economy has become more substantial and diverse in the last decade, and at times arguably more controversial. Early concepts of the ‘green economy’ in the 1990s (e.g., Jacobs 1996) have been superseded by a variety of different concepts of how economic activity might become env...

A vision of cleantech has been implemented on an international scale with financial assistance, new organizations and programmes. Given the wider contexts of political and commercial promotion, this article investigates management and governance of eight cleantech networks operating in different regions in Sweden. The aim of this article is to expl...

Denna rapport är samförfattad av forskarna på Centrum för kommunstrategiska studier (CKS). Vid CKS har det bedrivits forskning i samverkan med kommunerna sedan snart tjugo år tillbaka. Detta sammanfaller med den period som universitetens och hög­ skolornas samverkansuppdrag varit lagstadgat enligt Högskolelagen. Med denna erfarenhet som grund beskr...

This first empirical chapter discusses how green services develop in different local settings with a particular focus on the role of the public sector and how activities of local authorities affect the development of such services. These activities include policy actions and project activities. Green services are present in many different industrie...

Services and the Green Economy addresses a significant gap in the knowledge and understanding of sustainable economic development. Bringing together a range of expert contributions the book analyses the role of services and service industries in the transition to a greener economy. Framed by an approach within environmental economic geography, chap...

This article considers the development and role of services in the economy, the spatial relations of services as workplace and infrastructure. Topics include how services are organized and positioned in production systems, spatially distributed and operate across space. This article illustrates and reflects on the key question for service research...

Studien ”Infrastrukturinvesteringar, kommunal planering och hållbar samhällsutveckling” som presenteras i denna rapport riktar intresset mot mindre kommuners och orters förutsättningar att ta del av stora infrastrukturprojekt. Studien har undersökt hur kommunerna Motala och Mjölby genom planeringsinsatser, initiativ och samarbeten har verkat för at...

The global network economy involves intensive interactions and flows between places. In this paper, we define a theoretical framework of labour migration in the global economy in which we propose the importance of transnational spaces ‘from above’ and how formal organisations develop networks for migration processes. This theoretical framework is e...

This paper brings a geographical perspective to debates in research on knowledge and learning for the innovation of products and firms. The importance of understanding the development of “composite knowledge,” which should be understood as knowledge developed through the bridging of different knowledge fields, is stressed. The empirical focus of th...

This paper describes and analyses the geography of work, i.e., the spatial patterns in where paid work is done. The geography of work may diverge from the geography of employment when paid work is done at the premises of client organizations, during commuting, on business trips, on external meetings, at home or at other places. The particular patte...

This article discusses the geographical flows of the global knowledge economy and their unstable and rapidly changing nature. We use the development of activities in ICT (information and communication technology) in India and its connections to Sweden to illustrate changes in international business. The article explores the ways in which transforma...

This position paper presents the outline for a study of the changes in geography and organisation of the global knowledge economy and how the development of outsourcing and localisation of firms from the “global south” in the “global north” within ICT industry is supported by ICT tools.

Spaces of flows have become basic processes and elements in the development of space economies and cities. The objective in this study is to understand spaces of flows of advanced producer services. This article focuses on advertising firms in the geographical context of Sweden and Stockholm. The analysis considers advertising activities in the con...

This article analyses strategic spatial planning for city regions. The analysis uses a strategic development plan for a region as an example and is intended to contribute to discussion about the role of politics and the state in economic structures and processes. The objective was to define the types of discourses in the Stockholm plan. Norman Fair...

This article highlights cities and urban regions as the focal point of the growth and geography of post-industrial and postmodern service activities. Based on an empirical study of Sweden's capital city region, it illustrates the presence of multiple patterns as far as the structure and geography of urban economic development are concerned. Using s...

Research on the service industries has changed radically over the past few decades. Not only has work proliferated, but service research has further developed towards a deeper and more nuanced understanding of particular categories of services activities. However, as most research has focused on large and often densely populated economies, and on l...

At the beginning of the 1990s, film production in Sweden was heavily centralised in Stockholm. Today, film production in Sweden has decentralised to include three regional film production centres located far from the capital region. The article aims to understand this decentralised location pattern, focusing on the aspects of flexible film work and...

In seeking to better understand the processes involved in the structuring of regional labour markets, an interview study has been conducted which focuses on recruitment procedures in private firms and public sector organizations in the Stockholm region, Sweden. The analysis discusses some of the effects of recruitment procedures used by the investi...

The location pattern of advanced professional business services is a matter of interest among scholars in economic geography and neighbouring disciplines. This article considers location factors in the context of a conceptual discussion as well as a Swedish case- study. The conclusions suggest that there are reasons to reevaluate the relative impor...

The location pattern of advanced professional business services is a matter of interest among scholars in economic geography and neighbouring disciplines. This article considers location factors in the context of a conceptual discussion as well as a Swedish case- study. The conclusions suggest that there are reasons to reevaluate the relative impor...

This paper focuses on the relatively recent recognition that the health-care sec-tor can be an important source of innovation, business development and eco-nomic growth. In the wake of this discursive turn in policy, local and national in-novation systems and soft infrastructure have developed to support the establishment and growth of knowledge-in...

Advanced producer service (APS) firms interact closely and intensively with their cli-ents and it is therefore advantageous to be located close to their market. Thus export to foreign markets tends to develop through location of offices close to their interna-tional clients. In this process, geographical distance is created in the firms that may de...