| dc.description.abstract | This thesis concerns sustainable regional structures and takes its point of departure in regional
development. It focuses on small towns along railway lines in sparse settlement structures, and on
the interplay between land-use planning and transport planning.
Rail transportation has come to be widely acknowledged as a strategy for sustainable regional
enlargement, for example, through transit-oriented development (TOD) strategies. This has brought
about an emphasis on densification and compact settlements around stations, following theories of
energy-efficient structures and transportation. In Sweden, the concept of ‘station communities’ has
come to be a common element of TOD thinking in the development of regional cores, strategies
based on the idea of ‘station communities’ have been advocated. Consequently, in the Västra
Götaland region, the promotion of station communities is seen as a strategy for creating sustainable
growth.
The main purpose of this licentiate thesis is to scrutinise the role of station communities as a means
for sustainable regional development of sparsely populated areas. This was done as a multiple-case
study of three settlements with a train station in Västra Götaland. The main method for collecting
data was interviews and document studies.
The thesis has a starting point in the recognition of regional development, and three partly
overlapping tensions, namely, the tension between scales and between land-use and infrastructure
planning, and the status of train stations as nodes or places. Previous research has emphasised the
urban domination of regional planning, and that the strategy of station communities was developed
for urban and metropolitan contexts.
The results indicate that train stations, together with planning approaches inspired by TOD theory,
are regarded as important in municipal planning when identifying future developments, although
the prerequisites for TOD are absent and the demand for new housing and businesses is weak. One
conclusion is that when advocating development of access to public transport outside urban areas,
additional strategies are needed since current TOD theory does not work in the context of sparse
settlement structures. Additionally, station communities are understood differently by actors at
different levels. Collaboration between actors at different levels is seen as problematic in relation to
development of station communities, as there are no clear regional priorities or agreements. There
is also a lack of trust between actors and small municipalities have difficulties voicing their issues
and concerns. This has implications for the opportunities for regional actors and municipalities to
work with train stations and connecting structures as a strategy for sustainable regional enlargement
and regional development in sparsely populated areas. | sv |
