CITYLEFT /// TOWARDS TRANSDISCIPLINARY URBANISM: Nordics

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Arctic hypothesis

The exhibition aimed to promote dialogue on climate and economic transition in the Arctic from an architectural and urban planning perspective, as well as to use architecture creatively to explore future alternatives for society in the Swedish Arctic.

The exhibition was based on three hypotheses:

Form follows environment. This hypothesis suggested that the design of future Arctic settlements would be directly influenced by Arctic environmental conditions, adapting the form to wind, snow, ice, rain, and changing landscapes.

The network works. This concept viewed the city as an interconnected system where local issues and broader territorial challenges mutually influence each other, integrating local communities into larger regional or global discussions.

Green, blue, and white. Towards sustainability, this approach treated nature as essential infrastructure for the northern regions, with design strategies that effectively utilized vegetation, water, and ice as interconnected systems.

Ordinary cities in transition

In this thematic issue, we aim to shed light on how these processes of transformation are dealt in so-called “ordinary” cities. The term “ordinary” cities has been suggested by urban theorist Jennifer Robinson (2005) to highlight the importance of studying urbanization processes in out-of-the centre, small- and medium-sized cities (e.g., in the Arctic and the Global South) that may have different conditions and capacities in dealing with the ensuing urban transitions.

Green Inc project will focus on inclusive green transition

Together with Skellefteå Municipality, we are partners in an EU project project that includes cities and universities in Amsterdam, Brussels, Turin, and Bucharest. The aim is to develop inclusive nature based solutions to deal with climate change and rapid urban growth.

As the industrial green transition accelerates in cities there is the need to develop methods to better include society into this process. Having all stakeholders on board will ensure a more sustainable and democratic transformation of cities. This is particularly important in Northern Sweden where the transition is more visible with large private and public infrastructure projects such as Northvolt, Norrbotniabana, and Hibryt. These investments are pressing the municipalities to develop new land quickly.

“This is a unique project to develop creative methods to deal with the green transition in Northern Sweden.”, says Agatino Rizzo, professor in architecture and principal investigator in Green Inc. “Skellefteå is the frontrunner city in Sweden to implement innovative urban solutions for climate adaption in time for the house exhibition in 2026” says Therese Kreisel, Head of Urban planning at Skellefteå Kommun.

The Green Inc project is funded with 17 million kronor by national research agencies and the European Commission under the umbrella of the Driving Urban Transitions programme, Joint Programme Iniative Urban Europe. The project starts in spring 2024 and will end in autumn 2026.

Green Inc

time capsule

Architecture and design play a crucial role in the current energy transition. On one hand, a sound and aware architecture design process can greatly reduce the embodied and operational energy of our living space while, on the other hand, users’ experience and behavior must be considered to ensure their engagement and wellbeing.

We used this approach as a starting point for our submission to the Biennale. Our artifact displays the results of two combined courses in architecture and design, which were included as part of an ongoing research project (Nordic Innovative Living) at LTU funded by the Swedish Energy Agency.

The project's vision was a smart home where people live in symbiosis with the surrounding nature and use attractive solutions for a zero-climate footprint. The goal was to co-design a future model for smart homes built in Swedish Lapland, with smart solutions and services for effective and lasting behavioral changes and, through this, to spread knowledge about how people of different ages, abilities, social strata and gender can live more sustainably.

The project/course used a trans-disciplinary and co-creative design approach to explore people's behaviors with, and barriers to, smart energy technology. The students of architecture and design cooperated in creating solutions for sustainable housing and living in and through the co-creation of a smart home.

Our artifact collects a selection of proposals developed by students involved in this project/course. It takes the form of an archival storage drawer unit, where the work of the students is stored, presented, and shared with the public. A reference for this concept is the exhibition "A is for Archive" at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which exhibits the contents of Warhol’s so-called time capsules. Similarly, the artifact will embody this concept to offer the visitors an interpretation on how the future sustainable living could look like.

Arctic Five Chair in Architecture

Luleå University of Technology is pleased to announce the appointment of three Chairs to The Arctic Five network: Christina Allard, Agatino Rizzo and Karolina Parding.

The Arctic Five is a partnership between Luleå University of Technology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Umeå University, the University of Lapland and the University of Oulu, whom together aim to lead the way on key Arctic issues. The mission of the alliance is to advance and share knowledge, develop education, and create innovations for the advancement of our region and a sustainable Arctic.
As part of the Arctic Five’s flagship Chairs & Fellows programme, the Chairs initiative represents a group of scholars with the will and capacity to form original research and education alliances. Thus today, the Arctic Five institutions have collectively appointed 15 Arctic Five Chairs – all of whom are highly ranked scholars from across the human, social, natural and technical sciences.

Agatino Rizzo, Professor in Architecture, whose research interest include urban sustainability, smart urbanism, Arctic towns, climate goals, urban planning, and carbon neutral society.
– The Arctic Five Chair will be an invaluable opportunity to get access to a prestigious network of scholars, institutions, and networks that will enable me to develop further my studies in urban sustainability in the Arctic region, says Agatino Rizzo.

Arctic chair results:

MIRAI collaboration with University of Hiroshima (prof. A. Sharifi), Q method workshops in Umeå and Luleå (link)
Arctic hypothesis exhibition and catalogue (link)
Special issue on ordinary cities (link)
Interreg Aurora Re-Archtive project (with Centria, Lapland U, etc.)
Application Venice Biennale 2025

PhD School Urban Arctic

The PhD summer school will explore how sustainable development in resource extraction territories is being shaped and transformed by local and global trends, having a special focus on the Arctic region. The aim of the course is to analyse resource territories with a transdisciplinary perspective and to critically select and integrate methods. The participants will be introduced to local case studies and relevant topics but will be also asked to present and share their own research with their peers. The participants will work in groups on a conference-type poster that will be presented to and discussed by their peers and the teachers at the end of the course. Post-course work: develop a conference style paper in groups.

Architectural quality, design for circularity and design variation in wood façade systems

The doctoral research examines technical and architectural quality issues and assessment of aesthetics with focus on the connections between design, circularity, adaptability and reusability of the components by developing a digitized plat form. The aim is to investigate how knowledge and verification of these issues can be used in the development of future wooden building systems suitable for renovation and new construction with focus on the northern parts of Sweden. Funding for the project comes from Energimynigheten, E2B2. Partners in the project is: RISE, LTU, SCA, Hedlunda Industrier, Equator Arkitektkontor and Kiruna Bostäder AB.

Prosumer's perspective in cultural heritage districts

The purpose of this project is to develop, test and evaluate a method by which prosumers who live and / or work in environments with cultural-historical values are motivated and given the opportunity to integrate solar cells (funded by STEM)

more infos

Territories of Extraction: Mapping Palimpsests of Appropriation


Valley section of appropriation (Berta Morata based on Geonorge, LKAB, NaturalEarth, SLU, historical maps)

This research (PhD student Berta Morata, supervisors: Agatino Rizzo, Andrea Luciani, advisor: Chiara Cavalieri)—framed as a methodological contribution and at the intersection between the critical urban, urban political ecology and world-ecology disciplines—builds on Corboz’s metaphor of ‘territory as a palimpsest’ to explore the representation of the socio-economic and ecological processes underpinning uneven development under extractive capitalist urbanization. While the palimpsest approach has typically been used to map transformations of more traditional urban morphologies, this work focuses instead on remote extraction territories appropriated by the global economy and integral to planetary urbanization. The thesis suggests the central notion of ‘palimpsests of appropriation’ as a lens to map the extraction processes. It does so in its multi-scalar and temporal dimensions and on the basis of the three intertwined frames—i.e., the productive, distribution and mediation palimpsest—shortly exemplifying its use on the ground for the iron ore extraction territory in the Swedish-Norwegian Arctic. With this, the research contributes to the development of an expanded representational methodology and conception of territories of extraction—where social and natural production are brought together—illustrating how appropriation has been (re)shaping each of the frames throughout historical thresholds, but also how socio-natures are being (re)made in its image.

more infos...

RES-LINK: Workshop on Resources and Urbanization in the Arctic

Theme

Resource valorization and urbanization processes are intertwined, leading to the construction of cities and infrastructures as well as the extensive manipulation of the landscape. From time to time, under a market-led economic regime, cities, infrastructures and landscape are discarded with huge environmental and social losses. There is the need to better understand the so-called “resource-urbanization nexus” (Rizzo, 2018) to truly transform cities and regions and make them sustainable.

Case Studies

The Arctic is an excellent case study to unpack the complexities of this nexus. This region is going through rapid transformations that are led by the resource and logistic industries as well as intra-regional and international migration. However, this apparently peripheral part of the globe is deeply integrated with the world economy since this latter is dependent on the Arctic’s natural resources and energy. There is also the need to compare the story of the Arctic with those of other resource-rich regions in the global North and South.

Now researchers at Luleå Univesity of Technology want to take advantage of the waste heat generated by many industries in a better way. In a cold city like Luleå there are both heavy industries and large data centers that create large amounts of heat, which is apparent during the cold part of the year when steam rises to the sky.

"We have previously researched this with, among other things, Vattenfall and Bodens municipality. The difference this time is that we this time are going into more detail about how new types of greenhouse can be designed to utilize waste heat from data centers including lighting and humidity.

Cities are the biggest polluters and must transform their energy systems. Researchers at Luleå University of Technology will now investigate how to support "prosumers", people who produce and consume energy, by using design thinking and participatory strategies.

Porsön district in Luleå will become a testbed for such methods. Community workshops, design thinking, and socio-economic models will be used too find the best ways to support prosumers and the city to think beyond the box.

This means that energy ahestetics will be come an important factor to drive the energy transition of cities. It will lead to reimagine the most common urban infrastructures (sidewalks, streets, housing, etc.). "It will be interesting to work with the people living and working in Porsön to co-create togheter news ways of imagining and designing the city", Agatino Rizzo and Kristina Ek, both Associate Professors at Luleå University of Technology.

The aim of this project is to explore the possibility to smartly integrate food production in cold urban environments. The main objective is to sketch an intelligent platform to guide a comprehensive, city-wide approach to urban farming in winter cities and assist city stakeholder . The platform will integrate various data sources - geographic, population and building data (e.g., location, orientation, size), energy performance (e.g., energy declaration) - and food-science knowledge to be able to identify suitable locations for UF.

Urban farming (UF) has social, economic, and environmental benefits: socially UF will bring people closer to nature and it can become a source of education for local schools and community; economically, UF targets the rapidly growing market of premium, fresh, biological food that is proudly produced locally and can be sold to local restaurants and other customers; environmentally, UF will decrease our reliance from far away and poorly controlled food chains, while decreasing environmental costs for transportation. CF-0 is aligned to the Swedish National strategy for food safety (2016/17:104) which aims "in 2030 the Swedish food supply chain will be globally competitive, innovative, sustainable and an attractive sector to operate in."

more infos...

MIN-SPIRE (Sustainable Planning of mIning aREas)

MIN-SPIRE is a project funded by the Hjalmar Lundbohm Research Centre (HLRC)

The focus of this year course in Sustainable Urban Development is Gällivare which is located in the resource-rich region of Norrbotten. The region is at once heavily industrialized (steel, bio fuels, paper, extraction industry, large energy infrastructures) and one of the least densely populated area of Europe.

The project demonstrates the use of multifunctional ecological corridors for urban regeneration, where a specific focus is placed on the regeneration of mining areas and their connection with the rest of the town.

The aim of the project is to explore the challenges and opportunities in integrating urban planning and design considerations with mining sites. This move should contribute to: on the one hand, the sustainable (and economically feasible) rehabilitation of mining sites during and after operations have ceased; and, on the other hand, to diversify the local economy towards additional economic ventures (e.g., tourisms, sport, etc.).

Students from the Master Programme in Climate Sensitive Urban Planning and Building has developed urban design proposals for the future of Kalix. A greener and denser city more suited for pedestrians than motorists.

The project team was composed of 12 students with various fields of expertise: five urban planning students and six engineering students (civil, electrical and project management). Each group tried to add value to this urban planning project within their field of expertise.

The aim was to develop pedestrian traffic in relation to car traffic in a way that would lead to pedestrians getting preference in most traffic situations in the center area. It was most necessary to improve the connections between all the quarters in the center, where there was a wish to simultaneously improve the connection between the center and the green area towards the Kalix river. Generally, the proposal aims to create environments with significantly improved conditions for pedestrian traffic.

In recent years, Sparsely Populated Areas (SPARs) in Northern Scandinavia have been affected by important spatial, economic, and social transformation processes that are redesigning the identity of this once forgotten corner of Europe. Thanks to the natural resources boom of the last decade and a more recent drive to attract ICT and R&D businesses and institutions, economic growth in regions such as Norrbotten in Sweden has boomed.

However, this growth has brought new challenges for local policy makers:
- from a situation of general depopulation and housing vacancy typical of the 1980s and 1990s, today the largest coastal cities are suffering from a severe housing shortage while the rural areas are characterized by shrinkage and economic decline;
- just like in other parts of Europe, the changing climate has contributed to the vulnerability of towns and cities to prolonged rainfall and more humid winters while the extreme natural daylight and temperature excursions remain a “hot” topic for delivering an attractive urban environment;
- urban and regional infrastructures (e.g., transport) on this side of Sweden have naturally been weak while today there is the need for a general re-hauling of existing and planning of new infrastructures to support sustainable forms of mobility and more compact development.

A new, more strategic and spatially-oriented approach to area-wide territorial planning in SPARs of Scandinavia is badly needed to enable the long-term sustainability of the ongoing urban and economic growth. Supervised by a team of international researchers and practitioners, LTU master students will work in teams to develop a city-scale, spatial plan that focuses on Ecological Infrastructures as the strategic infrastructures to manage growth, regenerate both urban-cores, industrial, and sprawling peri-urban areas, promote climate-sensitive urban planning and design, enhance the ecological and landscape qualities, and deliver greater choice for mobility in the region. The focus area will be Luleå inner core including the nearby centres of Sunderbyn, Gammelstaden, Kallax, Gäddvik, and Rutvik.

Sustainable Mixed-Use Districts: Mitigating land-Use Conflicts in Industrial Cities (SUD course, 2015)

Project Site & Mission

Luleå is a city characterized by many industrial developments within its inhabited urban core. This has been mainly the consequence of the historic vocation of the city as an industrial and harbor hub for resource-rich Norrbotten, in the north of Sweden. It is also crucially the result of previous land use policies and master plans that have facilitated the proliferation of industrial areas throughout the city.

However, during the last decades the city has strived the service sector and increasingly towards the knowledge industry (see the Aurorum area and the expansion of the university campus). This, in turn, has attracted new residents from within the region and abroad and therefore has boosted the demand for dwellings in the urban core.

This rapid demographic growth coupled with an increasing percentage of the population with a tertiary education has exacerbated the land use conflict between residential and industrial areas. It has also further the social and spatial divides within the city.

The aim of this course is to map these divides and the infrastructural gaps of Luleå’s residential areas encroached by industrial clusters to suggest strategies and interventions to mitigate the existing and future potential land use conflicts.

The projects below show the potentials of many existing urbanized areas in the inner town. This urban regeneration approach is antithetical to the current developments in town:

- many of the projects concentrate in upgrading brownfield areas rather that green ones.

- density is crucial but it is always declined to increase the "intensity" of activities and social interactions and not for speculative purposes.

- finally, all developments promote walking, cycling, and public transit rather than car-centred development.

We hope that these projects will foster a change of mentality in Luleå's city makers towards a more attractive, sustainable and just urbanism.

Declining, transition and slow rural territories

As metropolitan areas around the world keep expanding, behind them, rural areas continue to be affected by greater rates of depopulation. This is not a new phenomenon: rural to urban migration has been reported in the developed world at least from the period between the two world wars. However, recent rural depopulation trends have dramatically intensified in both the developed and the developing countries worldwide. In planning literature, greater emphasis is placed on the “urban–rural” divide, that is, people leaving the countryside to look for better opportunities in urban areas. However, a growing body of literature points to the fact that not all rural areas are declining at the same rate. Indeed, some rural towns have managed to retain population and even to grow. Therefore, at least in developed countries, an “intra-rural” divide notion is emerging. To exemplify this notion, we have studied rural towns in Southern Italy.
Read more

Qualitative characterization of rural territories.

Urban Regeneration of Haparanda City Centre (Climate Adaptation Project course, 2015)

The municipality of Haparanda is located some 81 km south of the Arctic Circle by the shores of Torneå River. Its twin city is Tornio, located just across the Torneå river in Finland. This unique configuration has allowed Haparanda to grow and to attract a number of retail firm (e.g., Ikea) to serve the northern part of Scandinavia and Finland’s Lapland.

Haparanda is undergoing a number of urban transformations such as the development of a shopping area in the northern part of the municipality. However, the municipality wants to strengthen the old city centre. The idea is to complement the shopping-based economy of Haparanda with more cultural functions.The cultural and planning departments in Haparanda have delivered a series of suggestions on how the old city should look like in the near future. Political consensus is needed to go ahead with the project.

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