The strong municipality

Main issues
1 Origin and meaning of cities - the church, the market place, and the town hall.
2. Patterns of urbanisation in the Baltic region
3. How a municipality works - administration and democracy

Site description
Uppsala, the fourth largest city of Sweden with 180.000 inhabitants, is situated on the Uppsala plain 70 km north of Stockholm close to the Mälar Lake bay Ekoln. Uppsala has a rich history. It is the archbishop site of Sweden with a 15th century cathedral; Uppsala castle originates from the 16th century and was once of central importance for the Swedish monarchy; Uppsala University from 1477 is one of the oldest universities in Northern Europe. In addition Old Uppsala in its immediate outskirts is a centre for archaeological finds from iron age, the Viking times and the earliest times of Swedish democracy and nation building.
Today Uppsala is the one of the fastest growing cities in the country. It is a centre for high tech companies, the site for several state agencies connected to university research and teaching. It has a large academic hospital and two dynamic universities. The city is undergoing major changes in urban structure in particular in connection with municipal transport, and in some of the residential areas.

Model description
Uppsala will be the example for a discussion on the role and meaning of cities as a background to sustainable urban planning. It will be the model project to demonstrate the functioning of the essentially Nordic model of municipal democracy and administration with a developed level of self-government, a municipal planning monopoly, and comparatively high municipal taxation. An especially important issue is to what extent the resources of a society should be allocated to the municipal level to efficiently move towards sustainability.

Mia Forsberg, Urban Planner
Box 216
S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden
Tel +46-18-27 12 80 Fax +46-18-12 30 58
mia.ericsson@telia.com