When cities in the global north are considered environmental sustainable, this largely depends on how one measures emissions and understands space. Production-based and consumption-based approaches are two different ways of measuring emissions, but they are not simply measuring techniques: they relate also to different interests, they hide and reveal power relations, and they come with very different spatial implications. In this paper, we examine the Swedish city of Malmö, and the city district of Western Harbour in particular, which is often considered an environmental ‘role model’. We argue that this reputation depends precisely upon how we understand space and measure emissions. We argue that so-called sustainable cities and city districts in the global north can only be considered environmental role models if one chose to ignore the fact that they completely depend upon emissions being emitted elsewhere, and ignore any relation between affluence and emissions.

This article examines the international travels of ideas about sustainable urban planning and design through a focus on private sector architecture, planning and engineering consultants. These consultants, who we refer to as the global intelligence corps (GIC), package up their expertise in urban sustainability as a marketable commodity, and apply it on projects around the world. In doing so, the global intelligence corps shape norms about what constitutes ‘good’ sustainable urban planning, and contribute to the development of an internationalised travelling model of sustainable urbanism. This article draws on a broad study of the industry (GIC) in sustainable urban planning and design, and two in-depth case studies of Swedish global intelligence corps firms working on Chinese Eco-city projects. Analysis of this material illustrates how the global intelligence corps’s work shapes a traveling model of sustainable urbanism, and how this in turn creates and reinforces particular norms in urban planning practice.

This paper explores how local authorities can develop infrastructure for collaborative consumption, i.e. sharing amongst citizens of tools, spaces and practical skills.The City of Malmo, Sweden, is used as a case study to illustrate the work with such "sharing infrastructure". Existing planning research and planning practice for sustainability generally focus on facilitating citizens to live in a more eco-friendly way in terms of housing, modes of transport, waste flows and use of green space, but do not address citizens' consumption of other material goods. This paper points to a potential role for local public planning in relation to collaborative consumption through creating sharing infrastructure, i.e. providing access to shared tools and spaces for making and repairing, thus enabling citizens to act in the city not only as consumers, but also as makers and sharers.

This paper explores the effects and underlying intentions of Swedish practices of exporting sustainable development models to Chinese ecocities. Under the 'bestpractice' banner, international architectural firms are often invited to masterplan ecocity developments. The 'sustainable city' has thus become an export commodity, supported by the Swedish government and seen as especially suited to the Chinese ecocity market. Two cases are examined, where Swedish architecture firms have been commissioned to masterplan Chinese ecocities: the Caofedian and Wuxi Eco-cities. In particular, I examine three kinds of 'effects': first, the planning discourse manifested in the planning documents; second, how these plans materialize on the ground; and, third, the effects of this exported planning practice on Swedish policy and practice at home. This paper advances our understanding of how transnational urban sustainability practices are constructed and circulated. It further adds to the field of planning mobilities by examining not only the discourse and diffusion of transnational master planning but also how the 'export' circulates and returns. I argue that the two intentional logics of exporting the Swedish 'sustainable city'-to shape a better world and to export clean-tech products-could both be seen as having failed in these two cases. Instead, the naming and branding of the ecocities seem to boost a certain repetitive problematic idea and practice of sustainable urban development. I argue that the Swedish exported practice strengthens and legitimizes a circulating narrative establishing a sustainable urban planning practice fostering a paradoxically generic image of upper-middle-class consumers as ecocity inhabitants in China as well as in Sweden.

Sverige har under flera ar haft ett samarbete med Kina angaende utveckling av ekostader. Ett flertal myndigheter, foretag och forskare har medverkat i planeringen av tva stadsutvecklingsprojekt i K ...

Sweden has been praised for its sustainability efforts and decreasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. When nations and urban districts publicize their low GHG emissions, these emissions are often based on a production perspective including only emissions occurring within their geographical boundary. If instead a consumption perspective is applied then all emissions attributable to the inhabitants consumption patterns, no matter where they occur, are included, e.g. from imported goods and air travel. This provides new outlooks on sustainability, from this perspective Swedish emissions have increased rather than decreased in the last decades. Swedish researchers and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency propose that the production perspective should be complemented with a consumption perspective to describe more fairly who is responsible for what emissions. The purpose of this paper is to examine how a consumption perspective on GHG emissions has gained ground in Sweden, specifically in the new Strategic Climate Program of the City of Gothenburg, discussing what municipal strategies and environmental discourses this perspective enhances. Applying actor–network theory, we found three common features of importance for Sweden, and the City of Gothenburg, supporting the consumption perspective to gain ground. One is the existence of long-term environmental goals that facilitate this perspective. The other features are the existence of civil servants as drivers and the use of calculations from legitimate “fact builders.” We conclude that a consumption perspective strengthens the environmental justice discourse (as it claims to be a more just way of calculating global and local environmental effects) while possibly also increasing an individualized environmental discourse (as many municipal strategies aim to inform and influence the public to make lifestyle changes on their own). We argue that a consumption perspective is necessary in order to fully address environmental problems and to highlight issues of justice and responsibility. At the same time, this kind of eco-governmentality might lead to individualized self-governed climate subjects with outlooks that are too limited to foster change of dominant everyday practices.

Sweden and the broader region of Scandinavia have been widely praised for their efforts to develop and promote models of sustainability for the rest of the world. Swedish international architecture and urban planning firms are driven by the advantage of being able to brand their projects as Sustainable and Scandinavian. In this sense, the sustainable city has become a Swedish service to export. In order to strengthen a coherent image of Swedish sustainable urban development, in, 2007, the Swedish Trade Council initiated a marketing platform for eco-profiled companies under the name of SymbioCity. This paper seeks to explore the production of imaginaries at play in the performance of SymbioCity. It especially addresses the way in which notions of progress and a better city life were presented to Chinese audiences in the Swedish pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. The Swedish pavilion is here regarded as a node in the export of a wider network of Swedish sustainable urban planning services. I argue that the imaginaries that Sweden produces through activities associated with the SymbioCity underlines a view that equates progress with the notion of decoupling of economic growth and CO2-emissions. In presenting an image of decoupling as a Swedish experience possible to transfer to China, it also establishes views of progress as linear and space as static. Using the term absent presence opens up a counter narrative, which turns decoupling as a Swedish experience into a myth and raises the need for urban imaginaries based on a relational view of space.