Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen med huvudområdet kulturvård med inriktning mot bebyggelseantikvarisk verksamhet 2024, 180 hp Grundnivå 2024:03

Abstract

Local cultural environment planning in Sweden often comes to rely on municipal heritage plans. These plans are meant to facilitate management of local cultural values, work as a tool for local planning and increase awareness of cultural environments for the public. In the last decades public participation in planning has become more and more of the ideal strategy, challenging the idea of cultural environment planning as an expert-led field. The idea of the field as one that implicates public participation as a strategy has been fortified in Sweden through national goals, government bills and conventions. Nevertheless the implementation of public participation in municipal heritage plans remains quite uncharted. The aim of this study is to explore public participation in regards to how municipal heritage plans are developed and the perception of public participation in cultural environment planning amongst professionals, comparing bigger and smaller municipalities. The results indicate that although public participation is supported by national policies and seen as beneficial, its actual application in municipal heritage plans is limited. There is also a variation in how the development process of heritage plans are carried out in different municipalities and when public participation is integrated into the plans. This is probably due to a lack of frameworks and guidelines regarding how the heritage plans should be composed by authorities. Professionals express uncertainty about the implementation of public participation and believe that it is the municipality's responsibility to involve the citizens at an early stage, as the framework of the cultural plans lack the capacity and budget. The study also finds that citizens often have a lack of knowledge about heritage plans and cultural environment planning which aggravates citizen participation. There are also differences in the participation process between larger and smaller municipalities, with larger municipalities exhibiting a wider knowledge of the subject. The study concludes that early engagement of citizens from the municipality can enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of municipal heritage plans. However, successful public participation requires a committed effort from both municipalities and citizens as well as thoroughly conducted government guidelines.